A retired Learjet is set to play a new role training students in aircraft maintenance at Kingston University in the UK. The aircraft, which has a new home in the university’s school of engineering, has clocked up 17,000 flying hours carrying mail for the United States postal service.

The university says the Learjet will be crucial in teaching students on the foundation degree in aircraft engineering the finer points of electrics, hydraulics and mechanics. It will be looked after by former Royal Navy electrical aerospace engineer Dave Haskell, now technical officer at the school of engineering.

Haskell oversaw the aircraft’s last journey to Kiddlington airfield in Oxford, where it was dismantled before travelling by road to Kingston’s Roehampton Vale campus for assembly. He was also responsible for sourcing all the diagnostics equipment that the students will use on the aircraft. They will learn to use the computer equipment he has obtained to calibrate air, as well as vertical speed instruments and altimeters. The Learjet is one of a trio of aircraft used for training in the degree programme, run through an innovative education partnership. A Boeing 737 is already in place at Newcastle Aviation Academy, to be joined by a Hawker Siddeley 125.