Part I Notes
For anyone interested, below is my experience with the CX Part I interview which I did about a month ago in San Francisco. There was nothing that really that I hadn’t seen on here, Aviation Interviews, or Flight Info. This is just a current perspective.
Thanks in advance to all those who have posted as well as a few who have PM’d or emailed me with specific answers & gouge.
I stayed with a friend and drove into the city so I ended up about an hour and a half early for the 0900 interview. I bought a coffee from the nearby Starbucks and relaxed in Union Square while reviewing notes one last time. (The café in the Square does not open until about 0830.) FYI, for that last minute check in the mirror, the parking garage under Union Square has very clean restrooms on the north side across from Cathay’s office in the Tiffany building that one can access with the parking ticket.
A polite woman from the staff met me at the door and had me wait about 3 minutes in the lounge area. She then came back, collected my passport, licenses and logbook and then escorted me to the test room. The test was 30 question / 30-minute multiple-choice test. Most questions had three choices and were fairly straightforward – standard aero stuff but there were a few I had to think about: the axis of rotation were labeled with the British nomenclature, there were questions on Frise ailerons, ground looping on tail draggers, stability, etc. I finished in about 15 min and then took another 10 min to double check the answers since I invariably end up marking an answer wrong, which I did, so I was glad to have time to recheck.
I turned in the test to the same woman and took a quick head break. When I came back into the Cathay spaces, one of the gentlemen who I would be interviewing with met me. We made some polite small talk walking back to the interview room, which overlooked Union Square, where we met the other interviewer. A model of the CX-747-400 pax bird was in the center of the table, my logbook and other documents were on the side, and it appeared that they had reviewed them while I had been taking the test. The second gentleman asked most sincerely that I make myself comfortable and since the room was a bit warm I took my jacket off; I also keep my bottle of water out on the table. He then described the process in which he would go first with HR type questions and then the other interviewer would follow with mainly technical questions and maybe some follow-up HR questions.
HR questions from the first up to bat: Take as much time as you need and walk us thru your career. How did you pay for college? There were questions about my previous professional career in the tech industry before I joined the Navy and started flying. Why do you want to fly? Tell us about your first flight. He was curious about the Navy’s selection process for Post-graduate School. He asked about what I did in my present job on the wing staff. Was I involved with determining if students meet training standards? (Yes specifically when I fly as an instructor, not for their overall grades thru the syllabus.) What other companies had I applied to and what were the attributes at those companies, other than the financial aspects, that were important to me? What was the attraction to Cathay? What would I do if I had a class date from company X that was before the second interview from Cathay? Why are you retiring from the military? Where do you see yourself in 5 years? Why should we hire you? Will I have the same job satisfaction if I am just flying and don’t have all the ground jobs? (YES!) How do I think I did on the tech test? How had I prepared for the interview? Where does CX fly in North America? (I forgot Toronto & Anchorage; I just could not pull those two out of my brain even though I had looked at the route map about an hour before and told him so. Win some, lose some.) He also asked if I knew what the recent aircraft order was.
Toward the end of his questioning, he told me that if I were called back, the sim check would be in the -200 so I would want to ensure that I was prepared for that. I took that as a good sign.
The next gentleman followed up with some HR questions as well: How does customer service apply to the freighter side? Why hadn’t I applied to company Y? Company Z is hiring lots of Navy pilots, what about them? Questions about moving to HK – how would we cope, what did we expect, it not the same as with the Navy…etc. (This whole subject btw, was very easy for me; we have lived in Hi & twice in Italy and the opportunity to live in Asia for a few years is very attractive to us. My wife is a 10-move veteran and says, “Bring it on!”)
The general theme of the HR questions seemed to twofold: 1) one for them to get to know you, your career and motivation to fly and 2) to get a feel for your sincerity, interest and motivation for Cathay Pacific and your willingness to move to Hong Kong, if even just for a short while.
Interviewer number two then moved into the tech questions: What is the tropopause? Mach number effects in a climb? Wx in HK? Hurricanes in HK? A hurricane is coming at HK from due south, what would I expect the duty rw to be the few days prior? Where is gas kept in the -400? Why in the horizontal stab? Questions on the P-3 prop system and failure modes. What are the differences between the motors on the Metroliner (previous aircraft) and the KingAir (current aircraft)? He started to ask about the Saberliner, I told him that was a long time ago (14 years), and he waved off on that. I hadn’t flown anything heavy (P-3 was the largest in my background) and so how did I think that would affect my flying? (I think he was looking for the momentum factor which I didn’t state explicitly, but said that you need to think farther ahead on the g/s and on the descent since the jet flies differently than a prop due to spool-up time and he seemed happy with that.)
The general theme with the tech questions just seemed to get a feel for if your knowledge matched what was in the documentation and had you actually put some prep into the interview.
They then asked if I had any questions, which I did. Before I asked my I asked those five or six questions I had come in with that were important to me, I discussed a minor medical issue that hadn’t come in the course of the other discussions just to be up front and honest with them since it did have an impact on my career early on. I then asked about: DFW as a base (a handful there now and growing); age 55 retirement (yes it will change but who knows when, take the job with the assumption that it won’t); upgrade & captains board; I asked them to confirm that once thru the captains course, then are you always a captain and if you switch airplanes is it just a type conversion? (Yes was the answer I got.) I think that was about it.
The whole interview was just under an hour. Both men were very professional, polite, and cordial. I must say it was a relaxed and non-confrontational situation.
I started studying in earnest for this about 6 weeks out by reading Handling the Big Jets, then near constant review of Ace the … Interview, Aero for Naval Aviators, the AIM and the ATP Oral Exam Study Guide. I reviewed HR questions from multiple sources (PPrune, FlightInfo, etc.), studied the State Department’s web site on HK, Hong Kong’s web site, Cathay’s web site, etc., etc. During logistic runs, I had the other pilots randomly review interview questions with me. I did two workshops with Emerald Coast, one phone prep with them, and a video prep locally. Finally, I abused my long-term friend who I stayed with by having her grill me most of the day before the interview. My friend has worked in HR for a major tech company and told me that I had done at least 5 times the amount of prep she had ever seen any one else do and despite all that, I still felt I could have done more.
It paid off though because I found out about two weeks later that I had been asked to come to HK for Part II! So now, it is back to the books for me.
Best of luck to all!
Last edited by VVJM265; 23rd Jul 2006 at 13:57.