Answers to stupid questions

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There's a strong possibility that I'll apply for a regional late this year. Thanks to this website, as well as working for a 135 airline, I've built up a pretty decent understanding of a lot of the terms that people fling around.

There are some things that I find elusive, however, like all the ancillary details about bids, rigs, commuter clauses and so on. I would like to be able to speak cogently about them before I try my hand at interviewing, and I was wondering if anyone has any recommendations for reading material.

Also, does anyone have any suggestions for things I might brush up on? Flying instruments is an obvious one—flying in Alaska doesn't involve much in the way of instrument procedures—and another is working on the mental math tricks for calculating the stuff that I currently just use intuition for... but I'm sure there are many things that might catch me up in an interview or training...and I'd love some advice on what to look at if I wanted to get a head start.

Thaaaaaaanks.

-Fox
 
As has been stated on here a bazillion times over the years, don't get too worked up over it. Your individual airline will teach you about bidding, commuter clauses, and rigs. As far as interview knowledge, I would take a look at www.aviationinterviews.com and wherever you apply or get an interview at, do the research and study accordingly. The regionals are dropping their pickiness so I would expect it will get easier rather than harder. Don't sweat it.
 
I picked up a used copy of Everything Explained and I really, really like it, even though about half of it doesn't apply to me.

It does cover quite a bit of the mental math aspects and has a few "hacks" for figuring certain things out.
 
I tried to look through Everything Explained before, but HAVING every OTHER word UNDERLINED and BOLDED REALLY drives ME NUTS!

If he'd make a version without the bold and underlined stuff, I'd buy it quickly. x9

The other thing about it is that I don't find the regs particularly difficult to understand or digest, for the most part, and prefer to know chapter and verse of the actual regs... I'm always wary of 'expanded/explained' regs, because the last thing I want is to be in the position of saying "But SOURCE X said the regs said.."

Having read through a few sample pages of Everything Explained, though, it seems generally on the money, but I couldn't get past all the bold and underline. :<

Still, I guess I should give it another look, especially if it goes beyond the regs—I wasn't aware it went into mental math and other such subjects.

Thanks for the recommendation!

-Fox
 
Pilotdude3407 said:
As has been stated on here a bazillion times over the years, don't get too worked up over it. Your individual airline will teach you about bidding, commuter clauses, and rigs. As far as interview knowledge, I would take a look at www.aviationinterviews.com and wherever you apply or get an interview at, do the research and study accordingly. The regionals are dropping their pickiness so I would expect it will get easier rather than harder. Don't sweat it.
Click to expand...

I'm not sweating too much, but I have lots of time now, and I'd greatly prefer to err on the side of being over-prepared. As long as there's company training on the schedule stuff, I suppose I won't worry about any of that. I guess I always thought people went into the job knowing about those things, 'cause everyone sure seems to be on the same page when talking about such things.

Definitely aware of the aviationinterviews site, and I intended to look more closely at it as the time approaches... but I suppose it wouldn't hurt to start looking through that stuff now.

Thanks for pointing me that way!

-Fox
 
Find some gouge on the airline that invites you to the interview and study that. Learn the 3's times tables, and other mental math tricks... Mental math for pilots is a good book for that stuff. I mainly used that book and turbine pilot's manual to study for my interview, then went through the gouge and made sure I could answer most of the questions. It's not terribly difficult to get on at any of the regionals. Personally, I'd look at the RJs that are nearest to where you want to live and go after QOL. Commuting sucks no matter what, but the shorter/same time zone commute is a lot easier than going cross country. Even if the OTHER airline paid an EXTRA 5 bucks an hour, NOT commuting is worth A LOT. When you start applying and figure out where you want to be reach out to the JCers at the airline and I'm sure we'd all do what we can for ya.
 
Turn off the synthetic vision and moving map of the chelton and practice flying ILSs with the VFR approach mode. That's what I did prior to leaving south east AK to dust off the old cobwebs
 
Commuter clauses are pretty easy. They range from meh to pretty good. At my airline they are pretty meh. We have to list for 2 flights. if we can't get on 2 of those we don't suffer any consequences. We are obligated to get to base asap. Most of the time if it's really bad they will just pos space you.

Rigs basically guarantee a certain amount of pay as a ratio of total duty. So say you have a duty rig of like 4/1 you will get paid 1 hour for every 4 on duty. (I think I explained that correct.)

Bidding. Good luck. The two airlines I have been employed with no one has told me how to do it. probably because no one can. It's something you really have to figure out on your own. Someone should walk you through the steps for the program you use ( sabre, flica, etc). How to bid well it's something no one can really help you with. it's an esoteric art. After a few months you should start getting a hang of things and what works for you.

I've been with my current airline for 2 years and i sometimes find my self dumbfounded with what happened to my bid.
 
Pilotdude3407 said:
As far as interview knowledge, I would take a look at www.aviationinterviews.com and wherever you apply or get an interview at, do the research and study accordingly.
Click to expand...

Uh, this site appears to be a scam. After creating an account and registering, it shows me a little bit of information and then says "Want 91 More Study Guide Questions on Horizon Air?
Upgrade to a Professional Pilot Account to View These and More!" where it wants to charge $20 for a whole 90 days of access.

Why is it so popular to rip off pilots? :|

-Fox
 
@Acrofox

It's not a scam. It's well worth the fee. The gouge for my interview was very accurate, and I was able to prepare so well that I had no stress at all at the interview. I was actually able to enjoy the interview. They also will send you notices everytime info gets updated for any airlines you select to be notified about, so if the gouge updates the day before your interview you will get an alert.

The folks that do the work running the website, and who pay for the hosting of the website, deserve to be paid for their work. LOTS of pilots have aced interviews with the services of the website. Many pilots pay it forward later by writing up reviews of their interviews, adding info to the gouge, etc. I know I did.

I highly recommend the site. $29 (or whatever the fee is) was well worth it for what I got out of it, and cancelling the subscription via a simple reply to their email update messages was easy.

You can probably deduct the cost of the website on your taxes, too. Job search tax write-off stuff.
 
ppragman said:
Turn off the synthetic vision and moving map of the chelton and practice flying ILSs with the VFR approach mode. That's what I did prior to leaving south east AK to dust off the old cobwebs
Click to expand...

I do that sometimes, when I don't have pax.

-Fox
 
The gouge for my interview...
Click to expand...

... was supplied, according to their terms of service, by pilots like you who interviewed there.

The folks that do the work running the website, and who pay for the hosting of the website, deserve to be paid for their work. LOTS of pilots have aced interviews with the services of the website. Many pilots pay it forward later by writing up reviews of their interviews, adding info to the gouge, etc. I know I did.
Click to expand...

Just because something is common doesn't make it right. That website could be put together in a few composite days of side work. Hosting that website, given the volume of traffic that potential airline pilots generate, would cost less than $55/mo. (at the outside) Maintaining the information is the most difficult part, but selling it to a captive audience for $20 is flat out exploitative, in my book.

People seem to think that it's difficult to build stuff like that. It's not. It's easy. Really easy. It's also really cheap to run something like that, if you know what you're doing. The hard part, and the expensive part, is getting the actual data... and that, apparently, is being given to them for free by the people who sign up and then come back to "pay it forward".

If they deserve to get paid for their work, you deserve to get paid for "writing up the review of your interview, adding info to the gouge, etc."

I highly recommend the site. $29 (or whatever the fee is) was well worth it for what I got out of it, and cancelling the subscription via a simple reply to their email update messages was easy.
Click to expand...

The thing is, I wouldn't be angry about this if the site stated up front that it was a pay site. It doesn't.
Right on the front page it says:
"Get the most current interview information on the web FREE!"
Then it says "See more—click here to get a free membership!"
... then you step through the forms, get to what you're looking for, and bam—"PAY US MONEY TO SEE ANYTHING USEFUL."

That's very scammy, and I don't like it. It reminds me of trying to find porn on the internet in the old days.

In the end, I'll probably end up giving them money anyway, and that's what pisses me off the most about it. I certainly won't give them any interview feedback, if I get invited for an interview somewhere—I'll save that for the sites that don't charge.

-Fox
 
Your feelings about the practice aside, if you feel like having a significantly more successful preparation period for a regional interview I'd highly recommend spending a lot of time browsing through both aviationinterviews.com and WFFF.

IMO, you can actually get 60-70% of the same information that is "revealed" in the question bank that is opened by paying the additional fee simply by reading many interview reports on both sites and compiling the data yourself. I paid the fee, got out of it what I needed, then cancelled my subscription...and it was well worth what I paid.
 
Acrofox said:
There's a strong possibility that I'll apply for a regional late this year. Thanks to this website, as well as working for a 135 airline, I've built up a pretty decent understanding of a lot of the terms that people fling around.

There are some things that I find elusive, however, like all the ancillary details about bids, rigs, commuter clauses and so on. I would like to be able to speak cogently about them before I try my hand at interviewing, and I was wondering if anyone has any recommendations for reading material.

Also, does anyone have any suggestions for things I might brush up on? Flying instruments is an obvious one—flying in Alaska doesn't involve much in the way of instrument procedures—and another is working on the mental math tricks for calculating the stuff that I currently just use intuition for... but I'm sure there are many things that might catch me up in an interview or training...and I'd love some advice on what to look at if I wanted to get a head start.

Thaaaaaaanks.

-Fox
Click to expand...
I would probably, if I were you, worry more about what regional airline I wanted to fog a mirror for (preposition at the end). If you're relatively normal, don't have any medically documented or obvious mental disorders, less than 4 dui's in a rolling 72 months, and have an atp or have the hours and half the cognitive ability to achieve one, you are hired.. Am I applying at the right company is a better question to ask yourself.


Other than that, any private pilot book will give you the knowledge required to sound like Hop Harragin during any regional interview.
 
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Bama said:
I would probably, if I were you, worry more about what regional airline I wanted to fog a mirror for. If you're relatively normal, don't have any medically documented or obvious mental disorders, less than 4 dui's in a rolling 72 months, and have an atp or have the hours and half the cognitive ability to achieve one, you are hired.. Am I applying at the right company is a better question to ask yourself.


Other than that, any private pilot book will give you the knowledge required to sound like Bob Hoover in a regional interview.
Click to expand...

I'm intending to apply for Horizon, due to bases, equipment, and lots of things I like about their operation. Normal, normal medical, no DUIs.. no ATP, but I'm closing in on ATP mins.

The second option is Skywest.

Regardless of the rest, though, personally I favor being overprepared. (Not rehearsed, mind you, but overprepared.)

I try never to take things for granted, and I hate that moment of not knowing something that I know that I should know, but forgot. Some skills/knowledge/proficiencies deteriorate surprisingly quickly, and you don't know they're gone until you need to retrieve them.

That's really what I'm angling towards.

-Fox
 
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