LFRK .....
Here are my essay answers from nearly 10 years ago. Obviously the subject matter is a little dated now but it worked for me.
Don't fret over English not being your first language, I'm confident the recruitment team will take this into account. Good luck.
CB
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1) Why would you like to join BA as a pilot and how can you contribute
As a member of the travelling public whenever I think of British Airways, excellent customer service and the very highest of safety standards always come to mind. That said, as a pilot I recognise that these are consistently achieved because of the world class training crews receive at BA.
Believing sincerely in the above values and fully understanding how important training is, I feel I could reach my fullest potential were I given the opportunity to work for British Airways. My contribution would be to represent all that the company stands for - safety, quality, efficiency, loyalty - demonstrating the highest professional standards, each day, every day.
2) Give an example in your current role of when you have made an important decision. Consider the sources of information, how you prioritised and the final outcome.
Our duty involved two round trips to Manchester from Southampton. There was widespread fog and our allocated aircraft had no automatic pressurisation as well as a permanent fuselage door warning (defects were MEL acceptable). In manual pressurisation mode the workload is extremely high especially on routes where the cruise phase accounts for a small percentage of the flight time. This particular duty also involved crossing some of the busiest airspace in the world - four times, all with bad weather and the doors warning constantly on our minds -it is fair to say that I was feeling uncomfortable about the developing situation. Given all the information available as well as the safe conduct of the flight being our main priority I expressed to the captain that I would be much happier were the company to re-file us as FL80 - allowing us to fly unpressurised and allowing both of out attentions to concentrate on spacial awareness, ATC compliance and gathering MET information en-route. I thought conveying this to the captain was an important decision - a line of thought he too had been thinking along and ultimately flying at FL80 is what we did.
3) Give an eample of when you have been involved in a major change in the work environment. How did you adapt to this and what did you learn from it.
The integrating of Connect into Flybe was a major change in the work environment for all employees. For a while afterwards there were occasions when the atmosphere in the joint crewrooms became quite sour as hardliners from both sides made their respective thoughts known. As a very junior first officer I had not experienced a merger/takeover before and the subsequent period while things settled. In terms of how I adapted the truth was I had not been with Flybe very long when it all happened and was still in an adaptive frame of mind anyway, this was just one more thing to get use to. I knew the situation would calm down and as somebody who via my staff number could be recognised instantly as 'original Flybe' I made a point of being as congenial as possible when interacting or rostered with new colleagues. There were of course occasions when people were curt and it is from these times that I learnt that some people take longer to come round than others, some never do and really all you can do is have patience and understanding and not take it too much to heart.
4) Outline the competition facing BA at present and how in the role of flight crew you can contribute to the overall success of the business.
Low cost carriers are a direct threat to any full service airline serving the same routes in economically uncertain times such as these. Relatively new companies like Oasis and to some extent Zoom are evidence that the LLC might no longer remain simply an intra continental competition phenomenon (like Ryanair) but rather one that starts to appear more and more on transcontinental routes. This coupled with the EU-US Open Skies Agreement means that some very competitive times lie ahead - exacerbated for all concerned by rising fuel costs. Flight crews need to be continually aware that with fuel being the biggest operating cost the aircraft must be flown at its most efficient at every phase of flight and must always work to depart on time keeping in-check those overheads that are directly under their span of control. Flight crew can also contribute by helping to instil and maintain motivation as well as a pro company attitude among the entire crew and as ambassadors of the company project the image of trustworthiness at all times.