Start with me. I'm recently out of the Navy after 13+ yrs flying. Mostly F-14Tomcat and A-6 Intruder. Currently flying the DC-9 in the Naval Reserves.As of interview: Total, 2466, PIC 2058. Sent in resume in September 1998.Sent an updated one in March 1999. Didn't know anyone on the inside (actuallyfound out about a former squadron mate after the interview was scheduled).Don't know how I got the interview. They called to set up interview in lateMay. Talked to Carla Siders. Very nice and very competent. Earliest availabledate was 6/xx (over a month). Plenty of time to prepare. She said I couldfly into Dayton, Cincinnati or Columbus. I'm not jump seat eligible otherwiseI could have jumpseated on
company jet. They pick you up and pay for two nights in hotel. I think everyonewas at Wilmington Inn. I flew into Dayton. Another guy got picked up at sametime as me. Over the course of the next day there were at least 8 others interviewing.Not sure if I saw everyone because they were spread out throughout the day.One other guy waiting to interview at my scheduled time (2:15 pm). Met somein morning who had as early as 9:00 am. Mixture of military and civilian backgrounds.Air Force C-141 Colonel, Navy Seal turned enlisted aviator, Ryan Air B-727,Navy E-2, Navy COD driver who was currently unemployed, other civilian guysbut didn't find out who they fly for. Ok, it appears that they like Navy guys.Gouge that's out there: Many trip reports, all good. Biggest change is notesting as of sometime in summer of '98. Most trip reports said it's a 2 dayprocess but everyone on my day finished in one day. If you can get
someone on the inside to get an actual copy of the simulator profile that'svery helpful! I bought Air Inc's gouge and it was pretty good if you haveno other source of info but it's not worth the money if you have access tothe sim profile and/or good info on the questions for the interview. Gougeall said that during the sim the callouts and procedures were the most importantthing. That was NOT my impression at all. More on this later. Left hotel toarrive ½ hour prior to scheduled interview. Carla took my
originals of medical, FE exam, certificate, etc. Said there were magazinesand to wait there. One other guy waiting with me. Young guy, civilian, B-727FO with Ryan Air. He got called first about 15 minutes before our scheduledtime. I got called about 10 minutes after scheduled time by a different person.My interviewers were Captain Moe Todd and Sandy Radcliff. Both were very niceand very personable. Interview was very comfortable throughout. Interviewwas in a very small conference/meeting room. One table with room for about4-6 people. I was at end with one of them on each side. Setting was very comfortable.I had a notebook with copies of all my documents and handed that over alongwith my logbooks. Capt Todd looked at that stuff while Ms Radcliff startedthe interview. As per gouge she was going from a scripted list of questions.There were NO surprises on the questions. After she finished, Captain Toddtook over and seemed to be a little more free-form, though some of it stillappeared scripted. He didn't ask any situational questions. Just some technicalstuff, asked about accidents, busted checkrides, etc.
These are not in order but here's most of questions:
* Tell me about your flying career.
* What can you offer ABEX?
* What is one of your worst flying qualities?
* Tell me about one of your most stressful situations in the cockpit.
* Tell me about a conflict in the cockpit with another crew member.
* What are the top 3 airlines.
* Are you familiar with ABEX's salary and upgrade process.
* Why do you want to fly for ABEX?
* Will you relocate?
* How do you feel about night flying?
* What have you heard about ABEX's training?
* Do you know anyone who works for ABEX?
* What other companies have you applied to? What other's interviewed?
* Do you know ABEX pilots represented by Teamsters and Ohio has closed
shop laws? Do you have a problem with that?
* Have you ever had any accidents or incidents?
* Have you ever failed a checkride? (ans: not since getting my wings)
follow up: what happened before? (ans: two downs in TRACOM, one for FORM
hop and one for CQ) follow up: what happened? Follow up: Considering CRM
how could you have avoided that (form hop) down?
* On DC-9 what is Max T/O, Max Landing, max zero fuel, max ramp
weights?
* What is transition level and transition altitude. (as part of
answer I explained QNH & QNE - he looked back at his sheet and said you
already covered that so I think that was his next question.) Where do you
find TA and TL?
That's all I can remember. Interview took a good 45 minutes. Capt Todd tookme out a different way and had me wait in a different lobby. Very personableon way to lobby. Told me to relax and emphasized that. I waited about 25 minuteswhich made me pretty nervous, when he came back he apologized for taking solong and said that HR person was new and they were talking about interviewingstuff. Said that I had done very well on interview. Then he told me I wouldbe doing DC-9 sim and led me to briefing room. Sim can be in any of 3 airplanes(DC-9, DC-8 or B767). They had notebook with gouge for sim and he told meto read that while awaiting the instructor. Ryan air guy had been there about10-15 minutes. Another guy
(Navy E-2 guy) came in about 25 minutes later. They were swapping out siminstructors when we started. Our instructor was Capt. Mark Griz. He mentionedto the off-going instructor that he hadn't done a pre-hire screening in 5years. He gave us a thorough brief on the profile etc. One difference fromthe gouge I had was there wasn't as much emphasis placed on the callouts.He said they biggest thing would be basic airwork and instrument procedures.One example was the gouge I had listed a very
scripted takeoff brief. There wasn't one listed in the notebook. He said touse briefs, checklists, etc that we were used to. He briefed entire profileincluding approach. Said there would be no failures or abnormals. Just twoof us in box with him in left seat, me in right. Weight is frozen at 98,000pounds. T/O and Landing Data card, right there with all numbers on it. Hetalked a bit about the bug altitudes and bug speeds. Everything flown rawdata (no flight director). We went in order we had finished our interviews.Sim took about 25-30 minutes. Called for checklists and he said "complete"after you called for each of them. Asked for post-start, pre-taxi, taxi andtakeoff checklists. Also asked for ATIS and clearance. Gave a takeoff brief.Sim is set on runway. Asked for T/O clearance. I did static runup, handedoff throttles to him to fine tune takeoff power. T/O was runway 4L at ILM.Look at both 4 and 22 because you could get either. Climbout runway headingto 6000 feet. He calls 80 knots, respond "check", V1, rotate, V2."Positive rate" . "Positive rate, gear up". He puts upgear. Rotate to 18* which will give you about V2 +10. Climb to 1000 feet andthen call for flaps up. He puts flaps up. Continue climb at 1000 fpm whileaccelerating to 1.25 Vs which is bugged at 185 knots. Call "Set 1.7,slats retract". He'll retract
slats and set power to 1.7 EPR. Climb at that airspeed to 3000 feet (all altitudesare AGL). At 3000 feet call "set climb power, quick return checklist".Climb at 1000 fpm while accelerating to 250 KIAS. Climb at 250 to 6000 feet.Approaching level-off he gave me vector. Set up and trimmed then did steepturns. 45* AOB for 180 degrees then reversal to original heading. Vectorsfor NDB holding at CUBLA which is OM for ILS RW 4L. Briefed entry, timingetc. At 6000 feet need to ask for speed waiver. Also he didn't give EFC soask for that. After station passage gave vector to intercept 20 DME arc toVOR RW 4L
final. Also descent to 3000 feet. Have him fly it for approach brief. He didn'twant to actually hear the brief but just that I was going to do one. He stillgave me time to review procedures. Slow early rather than late. Configurefor Flaps 5/slats extend on arc. Intercepting final course, go to flaps 15.On all these try to fly the speeds on data cards. At 10 miles, he called "twomile fix now" I asked for gear down. Once down, flaps 25, landing checklist.Then I asked for flaps 40. The approach on the plate has procedure turn inside10 miles. It doesn't show a FAF. It shows once established you can descendto MDA. In briefing room he talked about it and said we would call the FAF8 miles. I understood this to be when we would
do our configurations per the procedures. I wanted to get down early so Istarted down as soon as I passed 10 DME. He asked what I was doing. I toldhim and he said "well that's legal but we said the FAF would be at 8DME". Ok, I leveled off at 2800 feet and stayed there until 8 DME. Theprocedures
are at the 2 mile fix (2 DME before the FAF) to go gear down followed by flaps25, followed by landing checklist. AT the FAF go flaps 40. I don't think Iimpressed him by going early on that stuff and especially the "early"descent. Passing 8 DME I descended to MDA. I had heard about a guy who bustedMDA (by about 100 feet) and they froze the sim on him and ended it. I leveledoff 200 feet high at about 3 miles prior to our calculated VDP. MAP is atstation passage which is mid-field. I was working it down
slowly and planned to level off 50 feet high. He told me to get down to MDA.I hurried it up to 50 feet high and he again told me to get down to MDA. Iwent down to MDA and leveled off and drove in. I actually busted MDA by about10-20 feet but he didn't say anything. I called out when we reached VDP andasked if he had anything, he said," No, continue". After that Iclimbed to about 30 feet above MDA because I didn't want to bust it again,and waited for station passage and began missed approach. I shoved the throttlesup and called for go-around power, but missed the flaps 5 call. He made thecall and re-configured. After that the procedures are the same as the takeoffso far as target airspeeds etc. Missed approach called for climb to 4000 feetbut passing ~2300 feet he gave me a vector and level-off at 3000 feet. ThenI got vectors for the ILS. Again he flew while I studied it and he didn'twant to hear the brief. Configurations were as briefed which was to go slatsextend/flaps 5 on base. Turning final go to flaps 15. At glide slope alive,call gear down. At one dot below glide slope call flaps 25, landing checks.At 1/3 dot below glideslope call flaps 40. He had briefed the glideslope interceptand said to use 3 degrees decrease in pitch attitude. Throughout the briefhe emphasized pitch attitude. I found their sim to be far more pitch sensitivethan the actual DC-9 and also more sensitive than the FlightSafety Internationalsim out in St Louis that I trained in. I chased glide slope and localizerthe whole way down. Made my calls of 1000 feet above, 500 feet above 100 feetabove and DH. We broke out about 200 feet above but I stayed on the instruments.I was lined up a bit left and when I went visual at about 150 feet AGL I pickedup a lot of wing rock. (Standard sim stuff). Visuals in the sim are oldergeneration
with just black runway, grey surrounding and runway lights. I ended up divingbelow glide slope but did an ok flare onto runway. Pulled thrust reverserswhich had easier movement than any of my squadron's airplane so yanked oneof them to 2.0 EPR. Normally you use 1.4-1.6 EPR. Finally just jumped on thebrakes since the DC-9 has good anti-skid. Overall I did not feel good aboutthe sim. I felt like I should have done much better considering that I'm currentin that airplane. I was off by 200 ft during part of my steep turn and againwhen I was on the arc. Didn't like my ILS or much of the rest of it. Whenwe got out, all Capt Griz said was "I bet your simulators aren't thatpitch sensitive". Then he took me out to the guard shack and I calledfor the hotel van from there.
The end result of all this was I felt very good about my performance duringthe interview, but not good at all about the sim. The normal timeline to hearfrom Airborne is about 2 months while they do the investigation. No news isoften good news although I have a friend who didn't hear for about 2-3 monthsand then got a rejection letter. A final note, I got the call almost exactly16 weeks after my interview
telling me I am number 70 in the hiring pool. Yeah! Now if I can just getrid of those other 69 guys (joke)!
Background: Commuter Captain, 4500 Total time, 2800 Multi, 2500 PIC, 1900Turbo-prop(700 PIC), 500 Night, 500 Instr., 1 Type Rating.
Experience: Flight Instructor, Chief flight Instructor, Line Captain, TrainingCaptain, Check Airman for scheduled 135 operation, Line Captain for 121 RegionalCommuter. No military background.
Targeting Airborne: I was mailing a resume once a month over a period of twoyears. No recommendations from anybody in the company.
Notification: I received a letter from Human Resources and was told to contactthem to set up an interview date. They only interview on Thursday and Fridays.
First Impression via phone: This is a PROFESSIONAL CLASS 1 OPERATION. Spoketo Human Resources via phone to set up interview date. (Set exactly one monthfrom phone call). Note: YES SIR, NO SIR, YES MAM, NO MAM, IT'S A MUST. USEIT.
Getting There: Fly, Drive, Run, Walk, Swim, you get it…MAKE IT.
If you are eligible to jump seat: they will set it up on an Airborne Aircraft
If you are flying on your own expense: they will send an Airborne Deliveryvan to pick you up at the Airport.
If you drive easy access from main interstates and highways.
Lodging: They pick up the bill. (CLASS ACT)
Transportation: To and From Hotel and Airborne Offices, use hotel van. Verynice people. TIP: talk to van driver, He knows more about the interview processthen some of the people I spoke too. Most of the times he knows what Sim theyhave been using for the sim ride.
Places to eat: Many, the van will also give you a ride.
Preparation for the interview: STUDY…..AIM, FARS, INST. PROCEDURES,SWEEP BACK WING AERODYNAMICS, AIRBORNE HISTORY, ANYTHING ELSE YOU KNOW YOUARE WEAK ON.
Sim Preparation: They use the DC-9, DC-8, and the B767. If you have any experienceon jets great, if you don't do not worry about it. (I had zero experiencein jets). If you have zero experience and zero money like me, I suggest someFrasca time if you are not IFR current, if you are well…then you arethe only one that knows how strong or weak your scan is. If you can buy somejet sim time I suggest something with EFIS (Airborne DC-8 and B-767 have EFIS.)If you are a Commuter Pilot it's just another day on the Job, No auto pilotor flight director. If you are a Military Pilot or Naval Aviator (just fromthe feedback I received from the Military Pilots/Naval Aviators interviewingthe same day) practice with NO HUD, Auto pilot, Flight directors, VelocityVectors, and Auto Trim.
First Day: RELAX…They want to hire you, if they did not want to hireyou, you would not be there. Show up half-hour before your scheduled time.The hotel van will drive you to the ABX Head office and drop you off in frontof the security office. Go inside, tell them your name and that you are therefor an interview and they will call Human Resources to meet you at the door.You will also be given a temporary ID card. Human Resources is great….verynice people. He/she will ask for your Logbooks and ATP/Medical. He/she willturn them in to the chief pilot for review. Now you have about a 20-min. wait.Sit down and stay RELAXED. While you wait read from a selection of magazinethat they have. TIP: Don't read sport illustrated swimming issue…..Ifound a magazine published by Airborne that had excellent information, whichI used during my Interview.
When it's time a chief pilot or assistant chief pilot will introduce him selfand escort you in a room where a Human Resources person will be waiting foryou. They are great people and will do everything they can to keep you relaxed.
Questions from Human Resources: Why ABX? (They know that you study everythingthere is to know about ABX, tell them something they don't know about thecompany (remember that magazine during the wait…that's where I foundsome great information.)
What are some of your best/worst qualities?
If you can change anything about yourself, what would it be?
What other airlines have you applied/interviewed with?
Top 3 Airlines in order and why?
When can you start?
Do you know the starting pay? (26,200)
Tell me about a difficult situation you had in the cockpit?
What can you give and bring to ABX?
Tell me about your aviation career?
TIP: Be honest and be yourself, but must of all be ABX.
Questions from the Chief pilot or assistant chief pilot:
What is Dutch Roll?
What is Mach Tuck?
What are the holding speeds?
Holding Instructions, where are you in relation to the NDB?
Memory items for your Airplane? (Fire, Overspeed, Etc.)
How do you feel about night flying?
Best/Worst flying qualities you have?
Accidents, Incidents, or violations?
Have you failed a check ride?
Why do you think people fail check rides?
TIP: Study, Be honest, always be positive and think as WE not I (CRM)
When it's over they will escort you out to the main lobby and tell you towait. They will be back in 5/10 min. and either thank you for coming out orthey will ask you if you would like to stay and fly the sim. The second choiceis always best, but if you are given the first, be a man, move on, work harderand best of luck in your aviation career.
Second day: (The sim "the electric chair")
The hotel van once again will bring you back at ABX at your scheduled time,don't be late but 10/15 early.
You will be escorted in the sim rooms and then upstairs in some of the trainingbuilding offices. They will hand you an abbreviated version of their SOP andtold to study. The instructor pilot will show up about an hour or so and giveyou a very short briefing. You will receive a better briefing once you arein the sim. Depending on how many other applicants make it you may be number2,3,4,… for the sim, and will have time to study more, but if you arethe first one don't worry about it and do your best. TIP: use the time tostudy, not to compare or size up yourself with the other applicants, but alwaysbe willing to help somebody else that has a question, (you may be that somebodyelse one day.) Try to study and remember the profiles, call outs, and briefings.Seems like a lot at first, but you can do it, and just try to relax, it'sa friendly atmosphere.
The sim Ride: You will be given a few min. to sit in the sim by yourself.TIP: use them, try to adjust your seat, rudder pedals, etc…don't justsit there and look at all the pretty lights……..
The instructor captain will return and give you a briefing …listen he/shewill give you a lot of tips…. Anytime you are asked a question or hemakes a statement or gives you some information…YES SIR, NO SIR, ROGER,NEGATIVE, OR POSITIVE. He will brief you on the sim ride and sim operation.He will then ask you if you are ready…before you say yes…think…(Iasked him about the emergency exits/operation and emergency fire bottle locationin the Sim…..He was very impressed. They are looking for basic skillsnot Test pilot skills. Fly the Sim the best you can, and remember it's notover until you hit the ground …and then some.
Sim profile: Takeoff briefing by you (By ABX SOP)
Normal Take off to 6000' (Gear and Flaps retraction)
Steep turns 180 left and right
Direct to NDB or VOR and hold
Vector from hold to inter. DME non-published Arc
VOR APP
Miss APP.
Vectors to ILS Full STOP
Tips: Don'tover control and don't worry if you make an error, move on keep flying. Usehim…CRM. If you're a commuter pilot don't let the size intimidate |
