Interview Questions
 

Why not go to Delta, American, or United? Would you leave this airline if one of them called and offered you a job?

I’m trying to figure out what the best way to answer this is. I’m thinking you just go back over the answers you would give for Why do you want to come to this airline? But I don’t know. This has been a tough one for me to come up with an answer for.

Geography is a great alibi for this one, if they have a base you want to live in. Especially plausible if you already live there and that's your address of record, or maybe you have roots there which are apparent from your job or school history. HAL was to know to strongly prefer locals for obvious reasons, some folks would go to the trouble of changing their residence to HI using a buddy's address (everybody in the Navy knows someone there).

Another one, depending on age and family circumstance might be to say that the industry has been very disruptive to your family life over the years and you need to settle down and stay put for their sake.

If they ask "can you assure us that you wouldn't leave"... don't say yes to that one, they'll probably think you're BSing them (I would). State that your intention would be to stay but you cannot absolutely predict future circumstances.

My answer would be that I have observed the trend of LCC’s gaining market share. The legacy carriers may offer limited growth as they shrink in size. Business and international travel may not ever return the level it was once at. History has shown us that no airline is ever truly “too big to fail” and LCC’s seem to better at staying profitable which brings a lot of peace of mind to someone looking for a career destination.

I steered away from that one because it's basically saying "I think I'll stick around if my economic and industry predictions turn out to be correct".

Also massive retirements at the bigs will make up for any stagnation... we see this now with hiring even though international demand is still in the toilet.

You want to tell them why you *will* stay, most likely. Not what conditions beyond anyone's control might or might not be conducive to your staying.

Between retirements and legacy compensation, anybody under age 50 is giving up money to stay at a LCC... the question you want to answer is "why" are you willing to give up a lot of money over your career. Geography is usually a pretty good answer. If your home address or previous life history backs that up, bonus.