Pilot Interview Technical Questions

[glideslopealive]

Hello,

I would be having an interview for a B733 FO job. Please does anyone know where i could download pilot interview technical questions such as that used by airlines like easyjet, ryanair etc? Am told i will have a 60 multichoice question test before the interview as well. Many thanx

[hollingworthp]

I am tempted to ask for the details of the bank that you bank with ...

However, as a serious response - while there are some inaccuracies and some things are plain wrong - this book will at least give you an idea of the style of questions you might expect.

Ace the Technical Pilot Interview: Amazon.co.uk: Gary v. Bristow: Books (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Technical-Pilot-Interview-Gary-Bristow/dp/0071396098/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1280300009&sr=8-1)

[Torque Tonight]

Do yourself a favour and don't waste your money on this book. The author and publisher really don't deserve a substantial wedge of your hard earned money for this sub-standard crap. If the publisher had any integrity they'd have done a recall on this book and had them pulped or at the very least would have made amendments freely available.

I'm not just having a dig, I'm deadly serious and am quite angry that I wasted a lot of money on this book at a time when I was really hard-up. It is full, and I mean FULL, of basic and fundamental errors that should have been caught at the editing stage.

If you are knowledgable enough already to spot all the errors then you don't need this book. If you are not, then this book could really stitch you up.

As one example, the formula for the coefficient of lift is incorrect. Seriously. This book is not fit for purpose. Good for propping up wonky table legs, or for fire briquettes. That's about it.:mad:

[mikehammer]

Can anyone comment on the services of UK company known as PIT training in this regard?

[bigjarv]

I can recommend a book called get a head for the sky for interview prep. Mostly general interview stuff but very very good. Not so hot on the technical part come to think of it but absolutely excellent for everything else. It's on amazon or they have their own site. Not sure which is cheaper.

[bigjarv]

Extra helpful tonight!!!

Get a Head for the Sky - Airline Interview Preparation (http://www.getaheadforthesky.com/index.htm)

[potkettleblack]

Have a read of the FR interview thread. Its probably up to 100 pages by now. There are loads of questions posted there. I am sure they change them regularly but it will give you a flavour for what they have asked in the past and what other airlines might get into. Eg: jetstreams, mcrit, advantages of a swept wing, principle of a jet engine etc.

My suggestion would be to open up MS Word and copy and paste the question across. Then check any answers as I wouldn't base your learning necessarily on what some anonymous poster on pprune says:)

[Kerling-Approsh KG]

We're interviewing at the moment, mostly for experienced folk, and I'll say three things:

First, a competent interviewer probes each line of questioning to find the limit of knowledge. Learning banks of questions and answers is no defence against this; it's a proper test of knowledge and ability to think things through, and it is often surprising how badly some candidates do - get something basic wrong like saying 'using flaps for takeoff extends the takeoff roll' is professional suicide, though we're much more lenient on the more esoteric stuff.

Second, it's clear that the training people receive nowadays does not equip them with a good grounding. Could you draw a a rough sketch of the engine of the aircraft you're currently flying, on a blank sheet of paper, and talk about what each component is for? Many can't...

Third, I'll echo the remark above about Ace the Technical Pilot Interview - the book is rubbish and if I suspect a candidate has used it to prepare, I have three questions which the book gets utterly and horribly wrong, and will deploy them mercilessly!

[MIKECR]

There is an argument off course that asking technical questions is a waste of time. People will either know the answer.....or they wont. The question doesnt tell the interviewer anything about the person, other than they might actually know some uninteresting fact like the engine produces x amount of thousand pounds of thrust at whatever random power setting:eek:

A certain interviewer I know avoids tech stuff like the plague. With only 20 or 30 mins per candidate, he chooses to ask far more in the way of deaper personal, character type related questions in the hope of forming a better picture of the individual and their background in the short time period thats available. Asking someone to sit and draw a schematic of the hydraulic system of their current aeroplane doesnt really prove anything.....just my opinion!

[Kerling-Approsh KG]

Perhaps that interviewer isn't concerned whether his airline's pilots are technically competent...

The technical discussion is only one element of our process, but there's no doubt it's the one most frequently failed.

[MIKECR]

Indeed.....and as we all know a good airline pilot requires many other key competencies and not just technical knowledge hence the reasoning for not bothering with tech questions. They either will know the answer or they wont. The interviewer i refer to believes there are a far greater number of boxes to tick during the interview. But is there really a perfect interview process....probably not.

[Kerling-Approsh KG]

OK Mike, I'll humour you...

I said earlier that each line of questioning should probe, to determine depth of understanding; for example:

- please tell me about V1
- what might happen to V1 on a wet runway?
- what is the relationship between VEF and V1?
- is VEF determined at the design stage or defined during flight test?

I'd hope any competent candidate would give a reasonable response to the first 'question'; very few indeed will be able to answer the last one. Rather than predetermined streams of questions, it's better to pick at the answer to the first question in a set, as the limit of knowledge is more rapidly determined.

This method means we don't just find out whether people know the answer, but whether they know the topic. 'Please tell me about...' is much more effective than a WWWWW question, too, and allows people to identify their own limits.

We tell candidates that they will be asked questions to which they don't know the answer.

The cardinal sin, of course, is bull####ting...

[MIKECR]

And i shall hopefuly continue to humour you too. The point I was trying to put across is that asking random tech questions is a bit like sitting in the hotseat of who wants to be a millionaire. You either know the answer or you dont. You just keep going until you either concede or you get it wrong. It only takes that 1 question(wherever in the series of questions it may come) and its game over. You might strike lucky, you might not. The only point it proves is that the individual can regurge a series of random answers. Does it tell you anything about the individual? Does it make them worthy of winning the prize? Personally, i would put them in the hotsesat and as opposed to asking a series of questions I would give them the opportunity to speak openly for 5 minutes on a subject i know they can answer.....perhaps why do you deserve a million pounds or what will you do with the money??

As i said previously, there is no perfect interview process. I probably sit in the camp that disagrees with the random tech stuff. Many im sure will sit in a different camp.

[asddsa]

- please tell me about V1
- what might happen to V1 on a wet runway?
- what is the relationship between VEF and V1?
- is VEF determined at the design stage or defined during flight test?

I am able to answer 1/2/3 easily, what about number 4? Can't find it even on atpl manuals.. maybe on jar/far 25 specs?

[pilot007]

Design stage... later veryfied during flight testing.

[Heliskier]

Despite still waiting for that elusive first airline interview, I would have to say that I have to agree with Kerling-Approsh KG. I have had several technical aeronautical interviews for university courses, as well as RAF interviews which although not being technical do follow a similar method of questioning. The whole point of the approach that Kerling is advocating is that it is an extremely effective way of seeing whether a candidate knows anything beyond the headline answer to the first question. As pointed out, bulls****ing is a massive no-no and for those days when you really can't remember the correct answer to "explain the effect of flap on the take-off roll" the best thing to do is to be honest that you cannot jump to the correct solution straight away and then work through to the answer. The interviewer is far more interested in seeing whether you can think than whether you know the MTOW of a certain aircraft. If I was already experienced on the type that I was being interviewed for then I would expect some random facts to crop up too. Mike CR, do you not want to be selected based on whether you have a sound technical understanding of the generic principles of operating an aircraft and cannot see that this would in some way be very advantageous to an airline pilot?

[Reverserbucket]

A former colleague, not doing particularly well with the technical component of an interview some years ago was asked if he could identify the type of aircraft depicted in a painting hanging on the fleet managers office wall. He responded by enquiring if the interviewer thought he was some sort of plane-spotter! (It was a Herald if I recall). He got the job.

I feel that technical stuff is important though, I mean we don't have flight engineers any more so apart from knowing where to find the cheapest beer and cooked breakfast down-route is it too much to expect candidates to know something about the aircraft they either currently fly or are interviewing for irrespective of the effectiveness of such questioning for 'weeding out' the weak interviewee or bul******ers. I continue to be surprised by the lack of general knowledge many younger F/O's demonstrate and being unable to identify aircraft types seems to be quite common these days.

[hollingworthp]

I must admit, I mostly used the Ace book for the questions themselves and didn't pay too much attention to the answers given (but used it as a guide to dive back into the books - clearly it is better to understand the answer rather than learn it by rote).

So on closer attention I can see why people are so against this book. Have a look at what it says about the Lift Formula!


What is the formula for lift?

½R + V² + S + CL

½R = half the value of the air density
V² = airflow velocity squared
S = wing span area
CL = coefficient of lift

The combined values of these properties determine the amount of lift produced.


COMBINED values??????????????