Overall, my experience with American was fantastic

Home Overall, my experience with American was fantastic

admin@readysettakeoff.com

, , American Ride Reports, CJO Offered, 0
Which Airline did you interview with? American Airlines
How many days between invite, interview, and listed availability? Received invite to interview 6 weeks prior to my availability date.
Did you receive a job offer? Yes
If you did not receive the CJO why do you think you weren’t chosen to continue in the process? N/A
What is your experience? Military
Total Flight Time 1,000-2,000
Total Turbine PIC Time 1,000-2,000
General Overview of Experience Overall, my experience with American was fantastic. They made the logistics of getting to and from Dallas extremely easy and I could tell from my first interaction in their recruiting department that they wanted to hire us. Since a majority of their training is done in Dallas, there was ample opportunity to talk with current Captains and FO’s at the crew hotel and training center. Everyone I spoke with was very positive about the company and seemed excited to see new hires coming aboard.
How long did you have your application in before you received an invite? 1-6 months
Did you attend a job fair? No
Did you do anything special that triggered the interview invitation? Nothing specific, just updated my application every few weeks.
How many internal recs did you have? 1-2
How long was it from the time of your invite to the actual interview? 3 weeks
Did you have any issues with logbooks, application or paperwork? None. The other trip reports cover the items you need to bring, so as long as you have everything in order there shouldn’t be a problem. For military folks, if you do not have a DD-214 yet, they accepted a signed letter from my CO that indicated my separation date and confirmed my availability. My logbooks were all in order and I did not include a summary sheet of my flight time. Several other candidates made a summary sheet, and if I could do it again I would probably have generated one to bring.
How did you prepare for the JKT/COG portion of the interview? Just reviewed the PPT slides that are going around to be familiar with the tests. The test got harder as it went and it’s designed to test you to failure. My advice is to have an extra cup of coffee in the morning before hand and be ready to laugh about it afterwards.
Technical Test Questions Not really a technical test, but the pilot panel interviewers will ask you a few scenario questions out of a laminated booklet. They encourage you to take a few minutes to gather your thoughts before responding, so I took advantage of that and the piece of note paper they provided. After I gave my thoughts about each scenario, the interviewers would discuss their thoughts and help steer me in the right direction. Here are the scenarios I remember:
1) You are number 1 for departure and ATIS is calling “light freezing rain”. You de-iced 26 minutes ago and you have 4 minutes of hold-over time remaining. The aircraft that landed in front of you reported braking action as fair to poor, and it seems like the precipitation falling is heavier than “light”. Tower now clears you to line up and wait. What do you do? (the question doesn’t say if you are Capt or FO, so asked them if I was the Capt and answered that way).
2) You are enroute from Chicago to NY JFK and are about to begin your decent from FL350. Weather at JFK and surrounding airports are at CAT 1 ILS mins and the radios are very busy and congested. NY Center switches you to a new center freq but you quickly realize that the freq they gave you was incorrect. Both you and the FO lost the previous sector frequency. You are currently making 530 knots over the ground. WWYD?
What was the hardest technical question or content you experienced during the job knowledge test? N/A
Cog Test Nothing really to add beyond what previous trip reports have said. I don’t know how much weight the COG test has in the hiring process, so I would recommend putting full effort into it but don’t stress about it afterwards. Everyone felt like they failed once it was over, so just be ready for that.
Cog Math Questions Simple order of operation questions. I practiced some on the flight down to Dallas just to get my brain ready for some mental math.
HR Questions The pilot interview lasted for about an hour with a senior Captain and a newer FO. Very conversational and they tried to put me at ease right from the beginning. No Tell Me About Yourself, or why AA questions. They were familiar with my resume and background, and it seemed like they had already pre-selected the TMAAT questions to focus on topics they wanted to discuss. Here are the questions as I remember them:
-TMAAT you observed someone breaking a rule or regulation and what you did about it
– Follow up question of TMAAT you knowingly or unknowingly broke a rule.
-TMAAT you had to improve a safety process at work?
-TMAAT you had to influence someone outside of your chain of command/organization to accomplish a goal.
-TMAT you had to interact with a person who disliked you or your decision and how you handled it.
-TMA a person you worked with that you disliked and how you communicated with them.
-Planning on doing the reserves?
How long prior to the interview did you prepare for the HR portion of the interview? About 6 months.
Which HR Prep service did you use and did it help? I used ECIC for the HR prep and it was worth every penny. I was unable to make an in-person seminar, but I did a webinar and a top-off 2 days before the interview. ECIC really helped me to frame my answers and develop a collection of stories that can fit a variety of HR questions. My advice is to go through their training, but be yourself and don’t sound too canned in your responses.
Any additional information you would like to add. Thanks to RST for building such a great network and resources for us wannabe airline pilots. I don’t think I would have been nearly as prepared going in if I didn’t have access to all the gouge and trip reports.
Is their anything you wish you could have done different to prepare you for this process? No.
Related Articles
 

©2024 Ready Set Takeoff

Log in with your credentials

Forgot your details?