Doctoral and applied research
Research
Four strands, all circling the same question: what happens to the human contribution to flight safety when the number of people on the flight deck falls and the amount of automation rises.
Doctoral work
My PhD at the Technical University of Crete, in the Department of Production Engineering and Management, develops behavioural markers and competency frameworks for single pilot operations. Behavioural markers are the observable, ratable elements of non-technical performance that crew resource management training and competency-based assessment depend on — and almost all of the existing ones assume two pilots who can monitor and challenge each other.
Remove the second pilot and a large part of that framework loses its referent. Cross-checking, monitoring, and assertiveness are not individual traits; they are properties of a crew. The work asks which competencies survive the transition, which need redefinition, and which have to be newly specified — and delivers a Single Pilot Resource Management training course built on the answer.
Strands
Single pilot operations
Hazard identification and mitigation for commercial single pilot operations; the historical trajectory of cockpit de-crewing; systems thinking and systems archetypes applied to reduced-crew concepts.
Competency-based training
Competency-based training and assessment as it moves from airline practice toward Industry 5.0; extended reality in aviation training; command upgrade and mentoring as a competency problem rather than an experience threshold.
AI in aviation safety
Prompt engineering as an emerging flight crew competency; AI applications in accident classification; risk assessment under machine assistance; the human factors of certifying learning-based systems.
Systemic accident analysis
HFACS in practice and its extension to other domains; hybrid frameworks for systemic risk analysis that cross-pollinate accident causation models rather than choosing between them.
Method
The work is mostly qualitative and conceptual, with mixed-methods components where the question warrants it — reflexive thematic analysis of practitioner discourse, netnographic study of professional online communities, and structured review. Where quantitative instruments are involved, the emphasis falls on construct validity and measurement invariance rather than on effect size, because the constructs in this field are frequently under-specified before they are measured.
I supervise and collaborate on work in these areas, and I am open to conversations about advisory roles, part-time lecturing, and co-authorship. Email is the best route.
Background
Before the research, twenty years of flying. Hellenic Air Force from 2001: cadet, then A-7E Corsair pilot at 116 Combat Wing, then flight instructor, standardisation officer, examiner and functional check flight pilot at 120 Flight Training Wing. Solo display pilot on the T-6A Texan II with the Daedalus Demo Team across three international display seasons. Deputy head of safety for a thousand-person wing, running the safety management system for a squadron of instructor and trainee pilots, delivering crew resource management and human performance instruction to around three hundred pilots and cadets, and conducting five HFACS-based accident and incident investigations.
Since 2019, Airbus A320 family captain, with periods as a standardisation instructor for an airline cadet programme and as a compliance auditor. Around 8,500 flight hours.
Last updated August 2026