The purpose of my visit had nothing to do with the past, however. I went to La Sarraz to learn a little more about a start-up company whose mission it is to allow small electricity-powered aviation to take off commercially in this country, called Pie Aeronefs. The pilot-entrepreneur who founded the company, together with a former pilot now working part-time as its marketing director, kindly showed me round the workshop where I saw the wings of the plane as well as one of the processes developed by the company to produce part of the wings’ coating. Next, the founder of the company gave me almost a mini-lecture on the technical hurdles which have to be overcome before being able to deploy several batteries inside the wings of an electrical plane. Never would I have imagined all the testing that is necessary prior to finding the right combination for the materials used in the box where the battery cells are placed. You see, were a flame to burst in one of the battery cells, it is crucial that it cannot propagate to the next battery cell, otherwise the wing would catch fire.

Now, as I think of the amount of work that goes into the design of any aircraft, I can only see aviation engineering as a mixture of labour of love and the will to solve the technical hurdles through human ingenuity. What a beautiful combination!