PhD Studentship in Making the Skies Safer: Assessing the Impacts of Regulatory Changes for General Aviation Pilots

Despite aviation’s good overall safety record, the general aviation (GA) sector remains a major and persistent problem worldwide. GA represents a unique group of airspace users with a diverse fleet of aircraft, ill-equipped to fly in controlled airspace. Most GA pilots fly for recreation purposes at the weekends, in good weather conditions and have relatively few flying hours compared to commercial aviation pilots. These pilots often use new technologies, e.g. tablets, inappropriately in-flight. Unsurprisingly, GA has a poor safety record globally, e.g. in Canada, there were 400 GA accidents in 2016, due to poor pilot performance, in particular poor situational awareness and decision-making (SADM).

Based upon research conducted at Imperial College London on the poor situational awareness and decision-making of GA pilots, radical mitigation measures have been proposed to improve aviation safety by enhancing GA pilot performance, working with key industry and research stakeholders in North America and Europe.

In particular, a roadmap is being developed for regulators on how to improve GA safety by improving the SADM of pilots. This will first be implemented in Canada, a country with a large GA community. Guidelines for the future training of pilots flying with new technologies, including tablets, will also be developed.

The PhD research will distinguish short- (1 year from implementation), medium (3 years for implementation) and long-term (5 years from implementation) impacts of the roadmap. In particular, the PhD researcher will determine the implementation of the roadmap for regulations and the training scheme and focus on what worked and what didn’t. This will involve both quantitative aspects, e.g. statistical analysis of safety trend, and qualitative aspects, e.g. interview analysis of GA pilots. The student will work closely with the stakeholders, especially the GA community in Canada and the UK.