Originally Posted by
bose-x
That comment may well be a good example of why this thread started.... Tell us what heavy metal you are flying? Perhaps better to have to have been a bit more honest with your position in the heavy metal flying world?
Feckin' big research aeroplane, qualified as a mission scientist although rarely fly as such, running the project to decide what to replace it with when it wears out, ran a campaign in India this summer of 1 big aeroplane, 30 odd scientists, 2 flight crews, and all the associated gubbins. Once spent some quality time as mission scientist in a smaller research aeroplane inside an ash cloud, amongst other notorieties. Continuous refresher training alongside a bunch of other science and flight crew.
Not claiming to fly the big stuff as a pilot, spend a heck of a lot of time working with the pilots to get the maximum out of the aeroplane, fit new equipment, design experiments, and so-on and so-forth. Also got to talk about stuff to ICAO recently in their general assembly hall in Montreal - which scared the heck out of me, and trying to run a project - working with various companies to understand the impact that climate change will have on airline operations. Working up a project to see if we can use a certain large airship to study chemistry and physical processes in the planetary boundary layer.
It seems to be what you end up doing if you have a CPL and a PhD. CPL knowledge used daily alongside PhD research knowledge, CPL qualification used 50-100 hours a year in smaller stuff and seldom as part of my day job, although also just about to fly a programme on mishandled stalls as one of the project test pilots. I can think of four other people with similar qualification pairings in the UK - one is head of flight support for Loganair, one is an air ambulance captain, two fly university owned research aircraft in between their own research projects at Cranfield (one of whom just made full professor, beating me to it, the sod).
Feel free to judge.
G