Hey everyone, my name is Alex Jones and I'm a commercial pilot finishing up my last year of college before heading off to an airline career. I've been doing research on pilot fatigue for the last few months and am now working on my own study. The study is small-scale and looks to see if jet lag plays a significant role in pilot fatigue. Anyone is eligible so long as you're currently flying regularly scheduled routes. The survey is just 8 questions and shouldn't take longer than 10 minutes to complete. I would appreciate as many responses as I can get and if anyone has any question or concerns feel free to message me.

Survey Link: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...rm?usp=sf_link

How can you call it research? You have no way of telling if someone responding is more or less susceptible than someone in the group as a whole, and no way of assessing if those with no axe to grind on this issue are going to respond at all.

What you are going to derive out of this will not have any sort of statistical validity. It may be a number of things, but "research" won't be one of them.

I appreciate the feedback, this is a small study intended to determine the need for more larger scale and comprehensive research in this area. My intended population is airline pilots flying all kinds of routes. Different people's susceptibility to fatigue is not something I had considered, but not something I need to include at the moment.

You're not remotely interested, so long as you confine yourself to scheduled routes.

Scheduled airlines have the least isssue with fatigue and the greatest protection, as well as multiple layers of circadian protection.

If you really want to know about "jet lag" and it's effects, look at those who still aren't protected by the regulation and who work through numerous time zones on each side of the clock; supplemental carriers who go long distances, work all hours, don't enjoy regulatory protections ensuring circadian adaption and who work longer and harder duty hours across more time zones than scheduled airlines.

That's where you'll get your hard look.

All the work has been done and the matter addressed in depth for scheduled operators. Only the supplementals were carved out of the regulation and face the significant challenge. They're also the only ones excluded from your question, which suggests you're not really interested in real answers, but only rehashing what's already very well known.

You're very correct on that and that is a significant area of need. The reason I said specifically regularly scheduled routes was because I wanted pilots who had done a decent amount of flying in the last 28 days. The study is not limited to just pilots flying part 121.

Does "a decent amount" have an actual numerical value?

No, an actual "study" has a null hypothesis and a meaningful statistical test and is designed to find out if the null hypothesis can be rejected. Something INTENDED "to determine the need for more larger scale and comprehensive research in this area" is called putting a sham study together in hopes of using it to troll for a research project grant. It isn't the same thing.

This isn't for any kind of research grant, if you want so badly to try to discredit my research this is so I can graduate and pursue an aviation career. I became very interested in pilot fatigue after doing research on it and wanted to study it since it will affect me throughout my career. If you believe I'm trying to be deceptive and pull one over on the pilots its just not true. I'm trying to get simple descriptive statistics to see what the pilots have to say about the current state of fatigue regulations and how jet lag plays its part.

Gee Whiz! This “soon to be college grad” is trying to finish a project, put a check in the box, graduate with a degree and move on with his aviation career. Have some compassion and empathy. Let’s help him out!

Again, see previous response. You say you want pilots who fly a lot and you want scheduled pilots to study "jet lag" (circadian fatigue), yet exclude the pilots that regularly fly thousands of miles on each leg, crossing eight or more time zones, etc, and who don't have the protections to ensure that they become acclimatized to a new time zone upon arrival...in other words, quite possibly the only segment of the airline industry to which your study might actually apply.

The duty and rest regulations for airline operations were changed several years ago to recognize "jet lag" and circadian disruption by moving flying to or from a given time zone, and to allow crew members to acclimatize to the new time zone.

Fatigue is certainly a major concern for pilots in many segments of the industry, but for all airline pilots save supplemental carriers, it's largely a non-issue because the regulation already takes it into account. The only airline segment for which circadian rhythm is entirely ignored, and which was excluded from the regulation, is the supplemental carrier...the one group you don't want to hear from.

https://www.ecfr.gov/cgi-bin/text-id...17_main_02.tpl

The title of the thread specifically asks for airline pilots, and you've stated that you only want pilots flying scheduled routes. That's specific. Airline pilots flying scheduled operations.

Do you know what Part 121 is?

Sorry, but the Administrator has sent word that surveys are only allowed pursuant to a Master’s degree at an accredited institution.