I recently got an assignment for my University Writing Class - I have to find a Business controversy, research its complexities, and write an imaginary letter to the CEO explaining why it was not fulfilling basic obligations to its workers. Of course, the first thing I thought of was travel.

I think a good controversy would be the fact that Emirates was flying DXB-PER on 77Ws without crew rests - the flight was almost 11 hrs each way. It was discussed extensively at anet.

However, my main concern is the lack of scholarly articles or publications which cover this subject. Does anyone know of any places I could look into to find articles regarding this controversy? My university has access to pretty much all databased you can imagine, and I can request any published material to be sent to me.

Thanks!

Cheers,

I am sure that it will be pretty difficult to find that kind of university minded publications, but maybe you instead study the the legislation on this matter, and build your work on this?

Regarding the 11 hour EK flight I seem to remember something about the rules being 11.5 hours before crews can demand a rest area, don't remember where this came from but read it somewhere...

Although, my research field is completely different (and thus I am not able to provide you with relevant links), I won't be too afraid that there is not enough related work. Of course, you might not be able to find that one piece of work that analyzes the impact of sleep on cabin crews (although even that one will probably exist). But there should be plenty of work to find, e.g. on the influence of working night shifts, of working in the air, of working mixed shifts, of sleeping horizontally versus seated, of the positive influence of breaks on the ability to work etc. Just enter some of the relevant keywords in search engines like google scholar. Of course, you need to do a bit of literature study and read on based on the references you find in the papers you look at to get to the most relevant articles.

But I am pretty sure you find enough papers to support each of your arguments.

You are not likely to find anything other than gossip regarding this incident in any publication that you could realistically cite for a university paper.

I would reccomend that you look elsewhere for a topic. If airline labour relations take your fancy, there are literally dozens of better documented topics for you to pick from.

As a person writing an airline dissertation too, I would agree with B747-437B.

Reliable citations, as you know, are crucial and the topic is probably too recent to be researched by academics that can write about it and publish their findings in journals anyway.

I'm trying to think of airline-related controversies but none spring to my mind.

Sadiq,

if you are looking for general information on crew rest recommendations etc, check for the UK CAA papers - CAP 372 is about the definitive publication.

Dr. Mark Rosekind of NASA (now runs his own consultancy) also did a whole heap of research on this topic.

Emirates has a bad reputation, going by bar talk - I know some people who fly there - on crew rest. But I doubt you will find anything published specifically on this issue with EK. Unless you can get hold of their Operations Manual, but I can't help you there.

As B-747 said you should look for another topic!