Originally Posted by Chrisw

My interview was yesterday afternoon and I am just now getting home from the trip. It was pretty much as described by several before me. I showed up and did the HR portion first. It was done with the chief pilot and a line FO that is the union rep. Both nice guys and somewhat took turns asking questions. I was asked to continue the interview process. HR gave me a stack of paperwork to fill out that took about an hour and still had to take some of it home with me. If you have an airlineapps profile I suggest you print out your app before showing up so you have all the dates, addresses, phone, fax of employers as well as all dates of previous addresses, etc. It will help a lot as I do not have all of that stuff committed to memory. Next I was taken to the old gulfstream academy building where i think there was a ground school in progress in one of the rooms. The sim was very challenging to keep level pitch wise, but roll control is very easy. Simply remember to call for all checklists and ask the sim instructor to help with anything that is not stick and rudder. Profile was depart 9R out of FLL to 2000. Call for before takeoff, gear up, climb, and cruise checklist. Once I started to move the throttles in the general direction and then let go, he would fine tune the power settings for me. After cruise, i had a quick turn to the left then back right just to get the basics of the controls on the sim and get a feel for it. Then track inbound to the VOR on whatever radial you are on when you get turned back inbound after reaching 10 DME. After you are established on the inbound radial to the VOR, you get holding instructions. I asked him to take the controls while I copied the holding instructions and drew my little picture. I was given, "hold northwest on the 330r 2000' EFC 10minutes" I chose a teardrop entry and upon establishing on the inbound course I was giving a heading to depart the hold to after crossing the fix then told, "vectors for the ILS." I again transfered the controls while I briefed the approach and then called for approach checklist when I took back the controls. After the glideslope was 1 dot away I called for before landing checklist and gear down. I asked for calllouts on the way down but was not given any altitude callouts so after I didn't hear "1000 to go" I did the rest of them on my own. When you break out of the clouds DON'T LOOK UP! Keep your head down on the instruments as long as possible. After landing and full stop call for after landing checklist. I had a sim eval sheet where he graded my performance 6 or 7 different areas. I think the options were bad, average, good, and excellent. I fortunately got excellents in all the categories and was invited to take the written. Couple notes on the sim. If you don't hold right rudder on the floor on takeoff roll you WILL leave the runway. I was warned about this and told not to worry about the TO roll too much. Ground handling on TO is pretty much nightmarish at best. I rotated from the grass. I have been in a half dozen or so sims in my life and this thing was pretty much without a doubt the worst I have ever been in. Especially trying to keep it on the runway on takeoff. The written test is as some have said, a series of questions that seem to be taken mostly from the ATP written test question bank. I got 45 out of 50 or 90% and was not told if that was good or bad or how it compares to the others. When I was done, the chief pilot said to expect a call within the next week or two with more information. All in all I feel as if I did really well. Having already done an interview at Eagle, I was much more relaxed this time around and kind of had an idea as to what to expect. With all the new saabs showing up(first one was on property today) there is going to be a lot of hiring and hopefully i can get higher up on the seniority list sooner and get to TPA and then captain. I look forward to the call and will most likely accept an offer. Looking back at my Eagle interview I did not have much confidence in my performance, but looking back at this one I feel like I pretty much nailed it. My suggestion to anyone out there is go interview. The experience I gained from the first one a couple weeks back was more valuable than all of the studying I did to prepare. Good luck to all and hope this helps.