AA Interviews
 

What are the parameters today to land an interview at American. I know it changes quite frequently but what are the latest requirements to be able to get an interview?

Here's what Google said. Hope this helps.

"To fly for American Airlines, you'll need a valid FAA Airline Transport Pilot (ATP) certificate, which requires a specific number of flight hours, a first-class medical certificate, and a radiotelephone operator's permit. You must be at least 23 years old, pass a background check and drug test, and meet the company's holistic evaluation criteria, which includes strong communication skills, leadership, and decision-making abilities. A bachelor's degree is preferred but not required."

there are 10,000 posts with information for you that you can search.


best of luck

In May recruitment came and said the competition is around 4800TT 1000TPIC

>3000 TT
>500 121 TPIC
~Prior military

Seems to be about the extreme low end of the spectrum.

121 PIC is not required. Nice to have

1000 multi-engine turbine PIC, at some point in your career, is indeed "basically required"

2000 turbine PIC as a Net Jets Captain, then you go to Frontier, get 500 hours in an Airbus, you will easily be called by AA

etc stuff

Long time lurker first post.

Got the cjo recently, 2800tt, 2200multi turbine, 800mtpic, all 135 flying no prior 121. Got the call for the interview after 9 months of updating my app. Don't know anything behind the scenes, but I'd get the app in and keep it updated. Hope this helps.

Does anyone know the current timeline from cjo to class date?

Thanks

3-5 months. July CJOs are being placed in October classes. 3 months if they run 4+ classes every month from October and beyond. 5 months if they start throttling classes but don’t pause. YMMV.

Speaking from personal experience, CJO was 15 July, class date is 01 Oct. Exactly 2.5 months.

Friend was at recent Day 1 events. Said they were told "60 per week." There were 60 in the class he attended. That's 250+ a month. No word on how long it was going to run.

That's good to hear. Recent history suggests it will run until they get scared. It isn't particularly clear what data scares them but that's the pattern. I would be very happy with 1,000 by the end of the year.

1k will roughly cover attrition and growth.

Long range forecast still shows ~15k which is where it's been pretty consistently for a while now. Maybe they are just catching up due to being short after pausing hiring for 10 months or whatever it was.

I thought the LR forecast had summer of 2025 at
14.9. We had 15.75 at the end of July before they started hiring again. Now the forecast of 2026 has us at 15.2. We’re hiring another 1,000 this year (250 a month) and running 250 a month through 03/2026 to “catch up” on sooner than expected A/C delivery’s. We have another 250 retiring this year and 900ish retiring next year. Your math isn’t mathing and we should be well past 16k closing in on 17k by the end March 26’.

Keep in mind that historically 1,000 pilots on the list were on some type of leave (mostly medical). The forecast number is active pilots.

It's possible that with the better disability package those percentages are creeping hire. I agree though that the numbers by March will be above the target in the bid. Their math is hard to understand.

The numbers change every week, I wouldn't worry about what they are looking for this week.

I would fill out the app and update it weekly and if your qualifications meet what they are looking for that particular day they will call. Internal recs, job fairs, etc all of course help a bunch but that's what I'd do.

I got called far sooner than I expected and when I was in indoc months later I was talking to an HR person and they mentioned that they were only considering people at my hours level for 1 or 2 weeks then things changed again. Having the app up to date and in got the call the very first day I had what they wanted vs waiting until you hear through the grape vine you might be competitive.

Wow! That is literally winning the lottery! Congratulations.

Monthly update is probably a minimum plan. Two weeks is what I recommend as they were running classes every 2 weeks. With weekly classes I'd be updating weekly. You have no idea when your resume produces the magic combination that works. After every trip works also. "I do my logbook after every trip and I figure while I'm at it I might was well update my applications." Worked for him as well.

How close to the DFW interview do they send info about the HR/Admin interview?

my interview is a little under 30 days out now, and I haven’t heard anything else. Im a little worried about my availability with my current flight schedule in this time frame

All I'm saying the long range forecast doesn't support increasing staffing much at all. I'd have to imagine they knew about those plans prior to publicizing the bid but who knows.

It's possible the forecast was done prior to the Spirit filing and now they are trying to increase hiring due to the possibility of them pulling out of some of our markets as well.

I received an email about the online HR interview about 3 weeks before my big interview trip at DFW HQ. The format was online Teams/Zoom/Skype. I was in a suit and tie, ready for a serious discussion. It turns out to be some very basic questions in a relaxed atmosphere with a lady from HR. If you have been studying the basic interview questions about “Tell me about yourself in three minutes…” (shorter than the standard five minutes), and “How to handle this conflict…”, you will do well.

Agree 100%. This is the guidance I received and my course of action. My class date is next month.

One “Gotcha” that bit me: on the app under work experience(?), look carefully for the tiny question mark in the upper right-hand corner of the page. It is a link to specific directions on where and how to list flight training. Neither the tiny question mark nor the directions were intuitive to me. I had to make adjustments two months after original app submission. May have delayed my interview selection by a month or two. Perhaps that’s AA’s way of weeding out those who do not pay attention to detail.

awesome thank you

Worst case - call sick at your current job to go to the interview.

Got the “fix it” email from AA. Is that usually a sign they’re taking your application seriously?

yes. It is. And make sure you fix it. My interview class had one guy that got the fix it email, then on the morning of the interview (before being split up), he got a bunch of questions about why his application hours didn’t make sense compared to his employment. He was the only one in our interview group that didn’t get a CJO. Not saying it’s related. But….

+1 for the job fairs. I wasn’t getting a sniff anywhere- went to 1 convention, got lucky and sat down with the right dude from AA. We hit it off and here I am about to start class at a legacy with sub-2K TT.

I know I got extremely lucky, but guaranteed I wouldn’t have this opportunity without going to a convention.

what were you flying?

Recently?

I have my doubts. Which legacy? I know in 2022 this was possible, but in 2025, I’m pretty sure you need to be closer to 3000 TT.

Do you know how to read? “Here I am about to start class at a legacy”

It’s genuinely hard to believe in 2025 that is even remotely possible, short of dad being a high ranking hiring official.

They’re hiring at peak levels right now.

I don’t doubt that, but surely there’s far more qualified pilots out there in 2025. But I’m impressed!

We've always said job fairs help. That's only true if you have a good personality and can build rapport. In this case it worked. Timing probably helps too, be there on a day when they have a bunch of seats in a class starting very soon and they are nervous they won't fill.

At least half this silly career is just luck and timing.

The same pilot could interview on three different days and a get a different outcome each time. It's a very curious business.

Job fairs are the great equalizer for legacy jobs. A 3000TT pilot won’t “ping” the hiring scoring system, but job fairs help get that precious face time for pilots short on the resume.

Im amazed at the number of pilots who are at 3000TT, have an app in, and won’t do a job fair. You want a legacy interview as an off the street, either fly 7000+ and apply or go to a job fair. It’s cut and dry

Meet and greet with AA Fri... 2400 TT/700 turbine SIC all 320. Any tips?

Have a really polished “Why American?” response

there was a guy in my interview group with 1900TT 0TPIC just last month. My understanding is that they’re taking people all over the place for hours

How long does it normally take to hear something from AA?
Applied in May, >6,000 and >1,000 TPIC, couple of LOR on file, one internal recommendation, meet and greet at OBAP (great feedback), no failures or red flags and heard nothing. Running out of ideas on how to get their attention…

More meet and greet. A friend recently had a second one and got a call for the interview...