The pure joy on ten-year-old Ariene Khan’s face is un­mis­tak­able as she sits in the cock­pit of a Boe­ing 737-800 flight sim­u­la­tor learn­ing to fly the same mod­el air­plane CAL (Caribbean Air­lines) op­er­ates.

The same look of joy and ex­cite­ment were re­flect­ed in the faces of the oth­er chil­dren at Pro­fes­sion­al Air­line Train­ing So­lu­tions Ltd’s (PROATS) avi­a­tion camp held last month at Re­serve Road, Trinci­ty.

The camp was de­signed to in­tro­duce in­di­vid­u­als to the world of aero­space.

Many dif­fer­ent as­pects of avi­a­tion were in­clud­ed in the pro­gramme such as the air­plane, parts, tech­nol­o­gy, sys­tems, the the­o­ry of flight and weath­er.

Be­sides en­gag­ing the chil­dren and al­low­ing them to re­alise their avi­a­tion dreams in a fun-filled, im­mer­sive and ed­u­ca­tion­al en­vi­ron­ment, they learned oth­er com­po­nents as well such as self-es­teem, anger man­age­ment, stress re­lief, lead­er­ship skills, com­mu­ni­ca­tion, team­work, crit­i­cal think­ing, and prob­lem-solv­ing.

Ariene from Princes Town said "I want to be pi­lot when I grow up. Mom first saw the camp on Face­book, my old­er sis­ter came to the camp and now she’s study­ing to be a pi­lot.

"I made friends at the camp, there are two oth­er girls in class, the self-es­teem pro­gramme is very in­spi­ra­tional. We al­so learned to com­mu­ni­cate with oth­er peo­ple, where they’re from and it def­i­nite­ly pushed me to the next lev­el of be­ing a pi­lot.

“If you don’t want to be a pi­lot and come, I’m sure you will be mo­ti­vat­ed and will want to be one as the camp is very mo­ti­va­tion­al and in­spi­ra­tional and it’s very ex­cit­ing to use the sim­u­la­tors.”

For Mar­cus Alexan­der, ten, from Pointe-a Pierre, it was his sec­ond time at the camp.

The St Pe­ter’s Pri­vate Pri­ma­ry School stu­dent said he learned a lot of things that will help him and the oth­er stu­dents in life.

Mar­cus said he learned stress tech­niques to help when feel­ing stressed out dur­ing a test—you could stop for a lit­tle bit, do stress re­lief ex­er­cis­es and restart.

Liam Costel­loe, 14, from Diego Mar­tin said one of his Fa­ti­ma Col­lege school friends who went to the camp last year told him about it.

He said it was very in­ter­est­ing, the stu­dents learned dif­fer­ent as­pects of the air­plane, how it func­tioned, jet en­gines ver­sus pro­pellers, and the 737-800 was his favourite to fly.

Liam said their train­ing to be a pi­lot can be ap­plied to go­ing for a job as well as stress re­lief in your dai­ly life.

Jes­si­ah Weekes, 14, from Tal­paro said his favourite air­plane was the Cess­na 172.

The El Do­ra­do West Sec­ondary School stu­dent said the pho­net­ic al­pha­bet such as Al­pha, Bra­vo, Char­lie, Delta, Echo, Fox­trot pi­lots’ used had a pur­pose to avoid an ac­ci­dent from oc­cur­ring.