Pictured: Mohammed Taher, aka The Airport Guy delivering his presentation at the 25th Annual GHI Conference
Aviation is a source of passion and wonder for many, and once it gets in your blood, it never leaves. The problem is that people are not aware of the opportunities so will not consider a career in aviation.
As a boy growing up in west London under Heathrow Airport’s flightpath, Mohammed Taher was fascinated by aviation and knew that it was the industry for him.
His dream almost got snatched from him on 11 September 2001 when terrorists hijacked aircraft and wreaked havoc on the world.
Post-9/11, Taher’s parents told him to give up on the dream of aviation because no one was going to hire a Muslim called Mohammed.
Heartbroken, he would cry himself to sleep because it looked like his dream had been snatched away from him.
Everything changed when Taher and his sister went to Cambridge Airport and met Martin Broadhurst, the CEO of Marshall Aerospace, which designed, build and fly aircraft from its facility.
Broadhurst gave them a facility tour, which confirmed that aviation was the industry for Taher.
Taher said: “When I sat down at the end of the session, I looked at him and said Martin, today has been amazing but I have one question, what does the future of this industry look like? I want to be a part of it. He look back at me and said I don’t know because this is my last week, I am retiring and going to do something else. He smiled at me, and said the future is in your hands.”
Hope returned but deep down Taher was dissatisfied with the answer because he knew the priorities of sustainability, economic growth and digital transformation.
Everyone knows this but as we sail towards these goals, the ship is sinking and no one is talking about it.
He explained that 51% of the workforce are over the age of 45, according to the Department for Transport, which means they will be retiring in the next 10-15 years while 70% of the next generation have little to no awareness of aviation careers.
Without a talent pipeline, aviation will not be able to deliver its priorities, warned Taher.
Asking the simple question of where the next generation spend their time, he said studies show they spend more time consuming content online than consuming food.
The social media feeds feed the mind and studies say young people are using the internet to decide on careers.
As he put it, the internet is the menu and if aviation is not on the menu, it will not get chosen and this must change, stressed Taher.
Starting small
As an aerospace engineer, Taher worked at Heathrow Airport where he was besotted by aviation and the inner workings of the airport.
He started making videos to teach people about aviation, which went viral and soon proved much more popular than Heathrow’s official social media channels.
Getting off a train in London, a fan stopped, starstruck, and called Taher the airport guy, which had a nice ring to it so he added it to his social media accounts.
Not only was Taher getting followers from all over the world, they were messaging him to say they wanted jobs in aviation, how do they get one?
One message that he showed was from an aerospace engineering student who called him inspirational because, like Taher, he was told Muslims were not welcome in aviation. It broke Taher’s heart that people still believed this misconception so it is his mission to prove it is not true.
Five years after he started uploading videos, Taher was sat in a room with young talent and he asked how many chose to work at the airport due to his videos. The answer was more than half the room.
The government realised the power of Taher’s videos so asked him to become an aviation ambassador at the Department for Transport because the skills shortage is not exclusive to Heathrow Airport.
There was already a team of ambassadors but Taher’s USP was bringing aviation to the people by putting it on social media.
He left Heathrow and started working with big brands. Working with dnata, his videos got over six million views, which resulted in thousands of job applications.
He showed a typical video which showed an aircraft being pushed back and at the end, he said that if you want to do this, dnata are hiring so click the link to apply. The video was educational and did not look like a job advert until the end.
Early in the year, Steve Allen, CEO of dnata was on a panel with other ground handling company leaders and he brought up the effectiveness of Taher’s videos.
British Airways approached Taher to hire pilots and his video was responsible for 48% of applications with considerably more women and people from ethnic backgrounds.
The video was nominated for, and won a national award for recruitment campaign videos.
Using his iPhone, Taher beat campaigns who used whole production crews because his videos felt more authentic, one of the judges told him after the awards ceremony.
Virgin Atlantic invited Taher onto Flight 100, its 100% sustainable aviation fuel-powered flight from London to New York where he sat two rows behind Sir Richard Branson and joined other aviation industry leaders.
He made a video about SAF, which got more reactions than any other video except the Prime Minister’s official video.
Telling the audience not to underestimate the power of social media, Taher said: “The world is changing, we are going towards a future where things are in the palms of our hands and we need to keep up. If we don’t, we will get left behind. I am really grateful that I get to push our industry to think differently about the world around us.”
He wants to revolutionise how we talk about the industry and recruit people, which requires transparent and impactful content.
Taher has a long-term partnership with Manchester Airport Group to create a series called Every Job at the Airport, which, as the name suggests, demonstrates all the jobs at the airport.
“We have to show the world what we do. As an industry, if we do not show the world what we do, we stand no chance of inspiring that generation to come and join us on this journey because the future is people staring at their screens. I want to take our industry and put it in front of them because if we don’t do that, they are never going to see us,” said Taher.
Connecting to a young audience
Taher asked how to connect to an even younger audience by asking how many audience members had heard of Roblox, which is the first metaverse.
Users create an avatar and experience a virtual world where they do what they want. It has 88.9 million daily users who spend an average of 2.5 hours on it a day, which is more than annual passenger numbers at large airports like Heathrow.
Brands know this is the future and have built 3D worlds with Taher telling the audience that IKEA has allowed users to become a co-worker in Roblox.
Across the US, IKEA is investing over $2billion in new stores, which will require staff so building a game where people work at IKEA is a recruitment tool.
Taher asked why not have an aviation Roblox. Team Latitude have built the most realistic aviation Roblox world where users develop a career at an airport and they receive training.
British Airways has expressed an interest in Roblox and raised the idea of measuring player performance and giving the best players real-life work experience.
Ending his presentation, Taher said decisions today affect the future. He asked the audience: “What actions are you going to take today as leaders who are going to leave a legacy for tomorrow?"
