| The following are the results from my interview with Mesaba Airlines on
23 Feb, 1999. You will fly to Minneapolis the day before you interview.
They try to keep everyone in a hotel called the "AmericInn". It will
set you back about 65 or 70 bucks. Mesaba will cover the rest except
for the 180.00 interview fee. I guess they are trying to determine if
you are interested enough to shell out the cash. Some teenage flight
instructor from a company called "Wings" will come and get you from the
airport. My driver took about 2 hours and I was somewhat upset about
this. Good thing the interview was the next day. Wings is an FBO at
the downtown airport in St.Paul where the sim eval is conducted.
Apparently, it is possible to schedule some time on their ast300 the day
before the interview. I really wish that I would have done this. I
hadn't flown a sim like that in a long time and found it to be really
squirrelly about the roll axis.
The day of the interview, another teenage flight instructor from wings
will be outside the hotel to wisk you and your fellow interviewees to
the airport for the big day. Everyone was led into a conference room
and we were met by a Dan Sheehan, Director of Administration (I think
this was his tittle). He talked about Mesaba for about ? hour or so
and then we watched a propaganda video. He was an extremely pleasant
guy. After the movie, we were administered the written tests. The
first was in every way, shape, and form, an IQ test. They were mostly
typical ACT/SAT type questions. They tended to get a little more
difficult as you went along. There are 50 questions on the test and you
are not expected to finish. They tell you to answer every question in
order not to skip around. I answered about 37 of the 50 and probably
missed about 3. There were questions like: you have 42 yards of fabric
and are making shirts that require 2 1/3 feet each. How many shirts can
you make. There will be 2 columns of numbers and you have to look
through and pick out how many are exactly the same. There are about
five words that have to be arranged into a sentence and then you have to
write down the last letter of the last word. There were five sayings
written down and you had to pick two that were most similar. (too many
roosters in the hen house, three doctors are worse than none at all)
anyway, this is the general idea. Just make sure that you answer the
questions in order and don't skip any. There was one math problem that
took a lot of time so I just wrote down an educated guess and kept
going. The second written was pilot knowledge oriented. It had 20
questions: when to use ILS hold short line, when is it optional for ATIS
to post vis and ceiling, visibility req'd to accept visual approach,
what does MSA on approach plate guarantee, a hold is depicted and you
have to determine entry, what altitude can you descend to with only
approach lights in sight, interpret a metar-very easy-after altimeter
setting, is a note p106, runway side lights, runway centerline lights,
freq to contact FSS when twr not in operation, unpressurized O2 reqs 91
and 135, when to activate PCL, airspeed restrictions in class B, C and
D, next proper IMC alt east above 3500 feet, altimeter pressure altitude
problem. That's about 15 of the 20 that I can remember. The first two
tests are timed and I think you get about 12 minutes each. The third
test is a psyche evaluation. They will just hand it to you and give you
all day to finish this thing. The name on the test was PDI-I believe
this was an acronym for personality development inventory. I would
suppose that the Psyche department at your local university would have
something pretty similar if you feel like studying in advance. There
are 100 questions and some are really stupid. One was something like:
I have never watched TV or used a telephone. Some were yes/no type,
some were three choice type and you had to pick which was most like you
and which was least like you of the three. Some were multiple choice
with about 5 different items. After the two writtens, you are given a
schedule that has three categories. This will determine when you will
have your interviews and sim ride.
My sim eval was first. You walk over to the "Wings" shack and an
instructor hands you photocopies of New York LGA Vor 4 and ILS 22 Jep
approach plates. There is also a section copied from that area of a low
altitude enroute. You will depart runway 22 (some said they did a SID,
but I was given a radar vector departure), fly to Colt's Neck VOR, after
you level off the instructor will reposition you to Colt's Neck to save
time. He screwed up when he repositioned me. From there you will fly
the transition to the VOR 4 approach and go missed to the published hold
which is the localizer for the ILS 22. I did one orbit and was vectored
out for the ILS 22 to a full stop. The instructor will set in the radio
frequencies for you but the rest is a single pilot operation. I made
two small errors on the ride that I can think of. When he repositioned
me at Colt's neck, he put me beyond it and gave me a clearance to fly
the transition for the VOR 4 and cleared me for the approach.
Apparently, he also told me to fly direct to the VOR first. I didn't
remember hearing this and so I just intercepted the radial. The other
error was that I was instructed to call the outer marker inbound on the
ILS 22. I remembered to do so about 2 miles after the maker and was
then cleared for a landing. Since I have no instructor experience in my
background, I am not used to flying simulators. I found myself flying
the approaches much faster than the 120 kts required. For the decent on
the VOR, I ended up using about 12 inches to get 1000 feet/min and
something less than 140. For the ILS, I went with about 14 inches and
after the marker found myself initially at close to 1200'/min to hold
the glide slope(even then I was a little high). A little practice on an
AST would certainly be a benefit before going in there.
The next step for me was an interview with a higher ranking captain.
His first name was Dan and his title was something like Saab 340 fleet
manager. During the initial presentation, he also talked to our group
about benefits, training, and jump seat privileges. He was a very nice
guy and I felt that this went really well. He asked a few general
questions like how did I become interested in aviation, but mostly it
was just general conversation about airplanes and my previous job
experiences. He asked if I would be available in a week's time for the
next ground school class. That was about it.
My final evaluation was with Dan Sheehan. He is very much a human
resources person and used the typical "beautiful day outside" type
statements to break the ice and relax the atmosphere. He asked for the
Psychological evaluation, my application (about 30 or 40 pages of
paperwork including background check forms that they send you in
advance), and the 180.00 check payable to Mesaba. From here he pretty
much reads questions one by one off a piece of paper and writes down the
responses. How did you get interested in aviation, what makes a good
pilot/captain, how do you rank yourself as a pilot on a scale of 1 to
10, tell me about something that you did(happened to you) in aviation
that you never want to do again. There were about 12 total and they
were all typical human resource type questions. Neither interviewer
will ask anything technical. They are very professional and make the
atmosphere as relaxed as it can possibly be.
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