OMG Mexican plates? I could be given anything. I must say this thread isn't making me very hopeful that I'll be called :(

No need to sh!t a brick toilet. Mexican plates are almost identical to US approach carts. The only real differences is that they like to use tear drop procedure turns, transition level and transition altitude are usually different (found in the notes section part of the briefing strip, usually 18,500/FL195) and there are different speed limits in Mexican airpspace. The charts themselves are not exotic or hard to read. Just know some of the ICAO symbology which is in the chart legend of any set of Jepps.

From my experience, personality was a big part of it. Know your stuff, yes, but (warning, big cliche coming) relax, be yourself, have a good time, etc etc. Its not a hard interview if you can read a METAR, read and breif an approach chart, know the most complex airplane you've been flying fairly well, and I think they asked about some multi-engine aerodynamics stuff (pretty easy if you're an MEI and have been teaching the stuff). The one thing that threw me off was being handed a departure procedure with a DME arc and being asked to determine the ground distance from the point at the end of the runway, around the arc to the one of the outbound fixes. I think they did that just to see my reaction under pressure. Then of course you get the standard BS HR questions.

wow that is an interesting question......out of curiosity, how exactly do you do that? Is there a formula?

1/60 rule to figure out the arc, which is the hard part. Basically 1 degree of arc is equivalent to one mile of distance at 60 miles (or 1/2 mile at 30 miles or 1/4 mile at 15 miles, etc). You just have to scale it fit your situation. It wasn't easy with the example they gave me. I think it was a 13DME arc and you arced along like 70 degrees. In the end, I think they just wanted to see you use what you know in a tough spot and not get flustered.

Or we could use 2*pi*r= the circumfrence of a circle. pi=22/7 r=whatever the arc is (13dme in the case above). Since an arc is a part of a circle, multiply above formula by the degrees in the arc over 360. This could be done on paper in maybe 20-30 secs and they may be impressed.

I hope my math is right as I haven't done a math course in years.

I understood your math up until the whole multiply above formula by degrees in the arc over 360.

From the time they call to the time they interview how much notice do you normally get? They sent my ATP books to my billing address for some reason and I wont be home for 3 weeks to get them :(


********PS are you guys buying these gouges or what?

If the DME arc is from 011R to the 101R then it is a 90 degree arc. A circle is 360 degrees. 90/360 is that portion of the circle that is defined by the arc.

Hope that helps.

Wow, good luck with that! Whats so hard about estimating to make the mental math easy? Look folks 13DME is pretty close to 12DME, right? At 12 DME each degree of arc is roughly 1/5 of a mile (60/12). Divide the number of degrees to arc by 5 (70/5=14) and boom, i just flew 14 miles along the arc. No paper or calculator required. Sheesh, yall like to make things complicated, dontcha!:D

And no, they wouldn't be impressed. If a kid whipped that out when I used to give checkrides (Not that I would, its a stupid question. Who cares how many miles you flew along an arc?) I'd tell him thats how a mathematician would figure it out, now how would a pilot do it?

Not really, I actually had to use the rule of 60 in the interview for my current job. I use fractions in my head for fun so working with pi is easy enough.

Anyhoo, I think as posted earlier that may have been a question just to check an interviewees reaction.