I recently had my Stage 1 interview in Hong Kong, and would love to share the questions that was asked...
a) Personal
1) Please introduce yourself
2) Are your flying lessons incorporated into your university aviation degree? Why and why not?
3) How has your parents influenced you in your choice of university degree?
4) What is involved in your university studies? What have you learnt as a result of your studies?
5) What made you interested in the aviation industry?
6) How has your university degree relate to your current job?
7) Does your parents, partner and company know about you being here? What are their views on you being here?
8) What did you think made you fail last time?
9) What have you done to improve on the matters just mentioned?
10) How did you prepare for this interview?
11) Why do you want to become a pilot?
12) Are your parents and partner supportive of you being a pilot?
13) How would your friends describe you?
14) What have you got to offer to Cathay Pacific if selected?
15) Did you apply to other cadet pilot programs? If so, what do you think went wrong in those application.
16) Why did you choose Cathay Pacific?
17) What do you think of Hong Kong? Will you be happy living here?
18) How have you dealt with conflicts in the past? Provide an example please.
b) Program Knowledge
1) What aircrafts does Cathay Pacific operate?
2) What's the engine on the B747-400 and A340-300?
3) What aircraft does Cathay Pacific have on order?
4) Name 5 destination we fly to in Europe
5) Where will you be sent for training if successfully chosen
6) Which airport does that flight school operate out of?
7) What aircraft will you be flying during your training down there?
8) What license will you gain after the completion of the program?
9) What position will you be offered after the completion of the program? How long will you stay in that position?
10) What choice of fleet will you be given?
c) Technical
Note: The technical questions were chosen by the pilot interviewer during the personal section of the interview, as he was seen circling and writing down the questions during my chat with the HR girl. Items were based on your level of knowledge. I was given more jet aircraft questions due to my working background.
1) Circumference of the Earth measured at the Equator
2) Is it possible to provide a fairly accurate estimate of the distance between two points (e.g: A and B) if they are both on the same meridian?
3) Where approximately is Hong Kong in refence to Lats and Longs
4) Maximum rated thrust on B747-400
5) Draw on whiteboard the four stages of thrust generation for piston
6) Do exactly the same for jet engine
7) Identify differences between the two
8) Draw VSI and explain how it works
9) If the static port is blocked during a climb, will VSI read 0 or maintain constant after aircraft levels off?
10) Name types of drag
11) Explain how the winglets work
12) What other wing tip devices are available?
13) What is aspect ratio? Explain why winglets are essentially affecting the aspect ratio.
14) What is the lift formula
15) What is the most critical aspect in the lift formula?
16) If we doubled the speed and halved the size of wing, how is the lift affected?
17) Does the airflow over and below the wing flow in a same direction from leading edge to trailing edge? Explain.
18) How does flaps affect lift?
19) What is the name for the point where lift is said to be acting from?
That was pretty much all the questions asked. But as I mentioned, technical questions can vary since pilots choose the questions based on your flying or working experience, and is selected pretty much during the interview at random. Be sure you are absolutely clear on the things inside the JKI as majority of the questions will be from there.
For me, the interview went on for about 60 minutes. Although on average, it normally takes about 35-45 minutes.
Hope this helps!