PhD Student

Commercial Aviation in Australia has an enviable safety record, however, the General Aviation (GA) industry’s record is less impressive. Commercial pilots in Australia will by-and-large be trained in the GA industry, it is a critical link in the training of pilots, influencing them in the formative period of their careers. It is therefore appropriate to investigate the attitudes and behaviour of pilots in this stage of their career to determine wether or not the attitudes and behaviours of pilots at this stage of their career are inappropriate or if there are any unexpected attitudes prevalent.

Additionally, the correlation between attitudes, risk perception, risk tolerance and behaviour in pilots is poorly represented in the literature. Therefore this research will investigate the attitude towards risk, the perception and tolerance of risk and the risk behaviours of Australian commercial pilot candidates.