Same here. Third year student at the University of Teesside.

Essentially, what the tutorial does is starts with NURBS, and roughs out the basic shape of the plane, creating the wings using two EP curves, and then lofting them. Each part is then converted into polys for adding more detail, before converting to SubD to tweak the shape further.

Kurt, who did the tutorial, can probably offer more advice, but I strongly recommend that you save up for the video. It's well worth it.