How would you answer this question in an interview for an airline pilot
position? You have 15,000 hours, tell me one thing that you have done
besides just sitting there and flying the airplane?

"My efforts have helped to enable passengers to go from one coast of
the nation to the other in less time than it would have taken their
great-grandparents to traverse two counties. And, while assisting my
passengers in this near-miraculous feat, I have seen to it that their
experience is so calm and quiet that they can sleep, read, or listen
to music instead of worrying that they are going to fall screaming
from the sky with their hair on fire."

Is that the USP??

BB

I have no experience with any kind of aviation... but, I have plenty
of experience in Investment Banking and Strategic Consulting...


That question sounds like they're asking what you do in your free
time. They likely want something completely unrelated to aviation. I
wouldn't try to spin an answer to include aviation (sorry, pink).
Instead, talk about an interesting thing you're doing with your
personal time.

Whatever the hobby may be, you can still present it in a way that
demonstrates your skills (especially skills relevant to the aviation
job). I would guess (JUST A GUESS) things like attention to detail,
leadership, and steady nerves are good skills for pilots. So if you do
some volunteer work that requires a lot of organization/coordination
with tight deadlines, or if you do an extreme sport that requires
planning & execution... etc. Those are the kind of things you can
stress.

"I like to read..."

BB

"I knew that it was Mary's time of the month when she handed me my
Captain's meal. I detected the tell-tale signs of blue toilet flush
about my chicken salad. I was only joking when I commented on her hair
style about 7 months ago now. I smiled to myself: This is going to be
a long sector, and I'm only on my first leg of a four day trip. I
remembered that I took a double take when her second senior scraped
the dropped meal from the galley floor back onto the plate for the
Vegan in 3C. Oh, that's right, we were short on catering, so the
pressure was on. Rather give them something than argue that "your meal
is not assured according to my PIL (pax info list)". If they complain
of grit in the salad, we can always blame catering and write up a
report.

Anyway, I warned my FO that I sighted a small bottle of Visine next to
his crew cup. Now, we know that a couple of drops of that stuff in
your coffee can cause quite a guts ache, undetected. Neither of us two
ate nor drank for the sortie, beyond what we secreted in our Nav bags.
Mary became wise to this. She arranged for one of her male flight
attendants in pretense to book an early morning wake up call for both
my FO and I at the hotel. We weren't due to sign on until 1645 hours
the next day. Would you like to hear about day 2?"

And you think I'm joking!

Yodzoo --

Any pilot with more than several hundred hours experience will have
run into situations that put them at the edge of their skills &
training.  Some examples would be:
*  flying or landing in weather that's unexpectedly nasty,
particularly dealing with thunderstorms.  A few years ago my partner
and I were flying in eastern Oregon when the Stormscope lit up and
Center informed us of a line of thunderstorms ahead -- moving in our
direction.  We landed at the Dalles, tied down the airplane, then
watched the line move right past the airport.  Ninety minutes later we
continued on, having avoided the storms.  It was a smart decision NOT
to fly on.
*  icing.  You can't fly in moderate climates without dealing with it.
 Once, upon starting an approach into Eugene, OR from high altitudes
where the airplane was very cold, I rapidly picked up ice in the first
500' of descent.  Rather than continue through 10,000' of clouds, an
approach that could take 20 minutes, I cancelled the approach and
asked Air Traffic Control for permission to climb back out of the
clouds and fly to an alternate airport.  Continuing on the approach
might have picked up too much ice.  Here it was a smart decision TO
fly on.
*  equipment failures.  A pilot with that much experience has probably
declared an emergency at least once -- how did it start?  What
situations compounded the danger? How did they manage it?
*  encountering unexpected objects in the sky.
*  a situation that resulted in filing an ASRS form.
*  a situation where the pilot determined the aircraft to be unsafe in
advance of a flight.

Best regards,

Omnivorous-GA

Apart from that, you have called into the Pilot Control Booth, THe
Ground Control Towers, and if you've been flying through ., you've
ajusted the light klevels in the cabin and in the fuselage

Tell 'em about the time you switched on the autopilot and watched Bill
and Ted's Excellent Adventure on DVD...

You might try talking about the sorts of things you could do while in
cruise, such as:

- Checking wx with Flight Watch, amending flight plan if necessary
- Giving a PIREP
- Organizing your approach plates
- Double-checking your descent plans
- Reviewing the approach
- Reviewing emergency procedures
- Double-checking your MEA and updating your altimeter setting
- Requesting a practice ADF steer (before they decommission all the NDBs!)
- Using pilotage/dead reckoning to manually compute your position,
then checking against the GPS (just to keep your skills sharp)
-