A space-struck student who taught herself the basics of engineering on Lego sets has progressed to mending jumbo jets.

Katy Linforth, 20, whose dream is to work for NASA, hopes her career will take off when she becomes one of the first people to earn a new Europe-wide aircraft engineering qualification.

Head-hunted by British Airways when she was 18, Katy, of Cleckheaton, spent last summer maintaining Boeing 747 airliners at Cardiff Airport.

And this summer, after completing the BA-approved course in Perth Airport, Scotland, she will be qualified to strip down and service airliners. Former Bradford Girls' Grammar School pupil Katy, 20, said: "It's my dream to work for NASA. I was into everything about the Space Shuttle when I was a kid.

"We used to visit the space centres in Florida on holiday and my bedroom was full of Technical Lego sets of diggers and aircraft - I wasn't a girly girl.

"I wrote to NASA asking how I could get a job with them and they suggested training in aircraft engineering. When British Airways got in touch with me I jumped at the chance."

Katy said the airline offered her a place on their professional engineer programme after searching for students with high A-level grades in sciences and computing, and an interest in planes.

The two-year course involves stripping down jet engines, mending wings and studying radar and aircraft instrumentation.

She will walk out with a Higher National Diploma in Aeronautical Engineering and the new JAR 66 Certificate issued by the Civil Aviation Authority.

Katy then hopes to win sponsorship from BA to study for a degree at City University in London.

Her father Graham Linforth, of Moorside Paddock, Cleckheaton, a retired motor mechanic, said: "At Christmas Katy would always want mechanical Lego sets.

"She wrote to NASA and they invited her on a tour of the Aimes NASA experimental base near San Fransisco. When we got there the head of personnel took her round and she loved it."

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