In the summer of 2024, Sydney Airport hosted 10 Saltire Scholars across various departments, resulting in time savings, fresh perspectives, new insights and strategic recommendations.
Sydney Airport (SYD), established in 1920, is Australia's busiest and oldest airport, serving as the primary gateway to the nation. Located just 8km from the Sydney central business district, the airport handles over 44 million passengers annually, connecting travelers to more than 100 destinations worldwide. With three runways and three passenger terminals, Sydney Airport plays a vital role in both domestic and international travel, contributing significantly to the local and national economy.
Sydney Airport joined the Saltire Scholars Programme as a Host Company following a connection with Entrepreneurial Scotland board member John Watson. The airport recognised this initiative as an excellent opportunity to infuse fresh talent into various departments.
By hosting Saltire Scholars, Sydney Airport aimed to leverage the unique perspectives and skills of the students, allowing them to work on significant projects that could drive cost savings, enhance efficiencies, and deliver innovative solutions, ultimately benefiting the airport's operations and growth. In the summer of 2024, Sydney Airport hosted 10 Saltire Scholars across the airport.
They brought new energy and a willingness to learn. They were curious, asked questions, and adopted Sydney’s philosophy of challenging the status quo. They didn’t just listen; they absorbed, reviewed against the data, and then challenged where things didn’t add up.
They delivered highly useful analysis in key areas that our own team didn’t have time to tackle. At the end of their internships, the interns delivered clear and actionable recommendations that we have used to guide our efforts.”
Interns advanced Sydney Airport’s goals with projects that included benchmarking retail strategies, creating a freight operations resource, and recommending new contract structures for revenue growth. They also revamped airline pitches and applied machine learning to predict flight trends, supporting the airport’s vision of serving 2 billion passengers.
For Sydney Airport, the experience of hosting Saltire Scholars was so positive that they would consider offering full-time roles to interns in the future. The Scholars brought fresh perspectives, time savings and actionable insights across key projects. Looking ahead, Sydney Airport is excited to host more interns in the future.
Through hosting Saltire Scholars, Sydney Airport has gifted 10 young people a transformative opportunity to immerse themselves in a new world of work and culture far from home. The experience has helped them develop critical skills, new connections, resilience and global awareness that has been defining moment in their careers. Josh Traynor, an International Relations Student from the University of St Andrews, shares his experience as an Aviation Development Intern with Sydney Airport:
Host companies partner with us because we have a robust selection process that identifies individuals who are consistently cited as the top talent within Scottish universities. Discover the benefits of hosting a Saltire Scholars..
The Saltire Scholars Programme is Entrepreneurial Scotland's flagship programme designed to find, grow and connect students with the ambition and potential of becoming future leaders for Scotland.