I just received a phone call from ATI for an interview. I have a few failed check rides my CFI,multi engine commercial, and my ATP with Skywest. Also recently I experienced an engine failure on takeoff. I was the pilot monitoring and my FO was pilot flying. My FO wasn’t very competent and I had to take the controls. Everything turned out ok. My company gave us some focus training in the sim which didn’t go so well and I got down graded back to FO and my FO quit. I want to know how to handle this in my interview?

Thank you in advance

 

First off, get some professional interview prep asap. If you're out of time, you can still probably get a rush session over the phone.

Here's my take. You have three problems.

A history of GA failures. This is the most benign, and can usually be written off to youth, inexperience, and/or the inherent inconsistencies in part 91 training and checking.

Then you have multiple 121 failures, that's a problem because you should be more experienced and 121 is *assumed* to be fairly consistent.

Taken together, you have a long term pattern, so they'll be concerned that you either didn't learn that you needed to step up the effort in training, or that you don't have the aptitude.

Third problem is that something went wrong in a real airplane, and went badly enough that there was remedial training and a downgrade involved.

So that's what the interviewer is thinking. They have to decide was it poor aptitude (which is likely an employment no-go), or did you not prepare well in training (due to work ethic or perhaps poor tactics, ie not focusing on the right things).

You probably need to convince them that it's the later, but then you have to explain what you have learned and why it took you so long to figure out.

The silver lining is that given the current (and future) pilot shortage, a lower-tier employer like ATI might actually prefer to hire folks who don't have squeeky-clean records, that makes it more likely they'll stick around since the legacies are barely warming up their hiring. But you need to convince them that you've learned some things.

 

Ok doesn’t sound like I have a very good chance thanks for your reply

 

Don’t count yourself out. The internet is great and all, but the only way to know for sure is to give it your best shot and see what happens

 

They called you, so you have a chance. I'm just laying out the battleground for you. Don't give up.

 

Don't give up bud............you probably won't end up at Delta but all is not lost.


RadialGal