Cathay interviw debrief

[Altyre]

Cathay interview debrief

Following all the private messages I'm receiving to know how my interview went, I'll just dedicate a new post to it, this way everyone will know!

So, first you have to take this short tech quizz (multiple choice answers), 30 questions in 30 mn. I'm really not a technical expert of aviation, however, I did it in 5 mn! All the questions are in "preparing for your CX interview", so just practice them!
Then, your answer sheet is handed to one of the interviewers who will take 5 mn to look at it I suppose since I wasn't with him yet.

Then, in you go, I had my interview with two young guys who are just starting in aviation: the chief flight instructor of the Airbus fleet and the Boeing fleet manager !!! Anyway, they were both very nice and made me feel at ease, the boeing manager started the interview by asking me about my present job, how I got into aviation, why I wanted to go to Asia, if I had ever had emergencies on board... The typical human resource interview, strengths and weaknesses, things like these. However, not one question about Cathay Pacific or Hong-Kong, which I was a little bit disappointed about because I had studied that a lot and felt I would have scored points there.

Then, the Airbus CFI asked me the technical stuff. I had a model of a A340 and a 747 on the table and he started asking me:
. why swept wings, which led to the critical Mach number.
. what are winglets for?
. what is the difference between leading edge flaps and
leading edge slats?
. What do you know about fan engines? What's on the 747,
how much thrust? (according to the airbus guy the answer
is: enough!)
. I fly a high tailplane, rear mounted engine aircraft, they
asked me about the drawbacks of this setting.
. Why fuel in the stabilizer? Why do you want the aircraft to
have an aft CG?
. What is dry adiabatic lapse rate?
. There is a thunderstorm on final, what do you think about?
What does windshear do, what is your procedure if you
encounter it?
. Coming to the stand, we hit the winglet, can we fly back and
where would we find out?

I think that's it. One very good thing with this gentleman is that he tries to lead you to the answer if you don't know it. For instance, I thought that leading edge flaps were slats, so I obviously didn't know the difference between them! I told him and he put me on the way, that was very good.

That's all I can remember. If you still have some questions, put them here so that everyone can benefit from the answers.