The sky’s the limit for a small engineering firm based at Pocklington Industrial Estate.

When Speight Engineering boss Dean Speight’s friend and fellow pilot suffered a stroke he became wheelchair-bound and was unable to fly light aircraft.

The only way to get his friend into the cockpit was to physically manhandle him into it. Not a dignified sight.

So Dean and another flying friend, Martin Wiseman of Condor Projects, decided the only answer was to build an aircraft specifically to accommodate a wheelchair and which could be operated by a disabled person. That’s when the link with higher education began.

They approached various universities around the UK and Europe with the idea and Speight engineering and Condor projects were selected as the industrial partner for the annual European Global Product Realisation (EGPR) course for 2013. EGPR brings together 40 students from five universities with an industrial partner to create real new-product prototypes.

Working with students from universities across Europe, Speight Engineeering began the project task for the design and optimisation of a fuselage for an airplane to be flown by disabled people, as well as a bespoke electric wheel chair to dock into the fuselage as the disabled pilot’s seat.

The students worked together mainly through video conferencing, each group given a specific design task ahead of final manufacturing and assembly. In early June they travelled to Speight’s facility during the final workshop week where the components were assembled.

The aircraft has been named Flyable and the docking wheelchair, Wingchair. The fuselage and wingchair design was produced in prototype form, tested and publicly presented and evaluated at City University, London.

Speight Engineering, along with Condor are now planning to build a flying prototype before putting the Flyable and Wingchair designs into production.

And because of the success of the project, Speight Engineering is vying for the Best Business & Higher Education Link category in The Press Business Awards 2013. “We plan to continue to liaise with the various university teams and to employ students of aeronautical design during their gap year to give them valuable insights into the manufacturing process,” said Mr Speight.