Originally Posted by
jaxsurf
Maybe because they’re a safety investigator who works for a major airline and not a 91/135 operator?
Actually, while I work for the airlines today-- I did not when I started this process. I watched my dear airline pilot husband commute from BWI to LAS through 4 time zones and it became a topic of interest. Today I work in Tech Ops (maintenance & engineering primarily) for a major airline. My preference is to work with pilots, but I consider this to be an advantage while completing my research. This helps avoid any appearance of a relationship between my research and my company. For this reason I have also not asked anyone in pilot leadership at my company to blast my survey to company pilots. Although I wouldn't mind if the union sent it out
, but this has not happened and I have not asked. Additionally, company sponsored research sounds great but can cause many problems for a student researcher, because the company ultimately owns your data. This is not the case in my situation, my company does not control my research data.
Fatigue in 91/135/Cargo/GA are all interesting topics. However, a dissertation is a little bit like a private pilot certificate. It is a license to learn. The goal is to research, graduate, then publish. Each variable (like adding cargo/91/135, etc) exponentially increases time, workload, and length. I'm looking at around 200-250 pages right now. Adding Cargo, or 135 or 91 would probably increase that at least 100 pages per category. I know you are all dying to read a 500 page dissertation!
Additionally, my committee and I felt that it was easier to control for variables amongst the passenger airline pilot population. 91/135 rules for fatigue vary widely from operator to operator and the type of work conducted is less homogenous.