How to Interview to Be a Flight Attendant for a Major Airline

To my surprise and delight, I received my invitation to travel to a metropolitan city to interview for a major airline on Friday.

This isn't my first time. I'm hardly a FA virgin having flown for two charter companies. Both went bankrupt, leaving me and other crew members holding worthless paychecks from $5K-$30K in the mid 1990s.

Despite this reality, I'm both excited and for some odd reason, exceptionally nervous about this interview.

I've read extensive blogs to help prepare as the majors are completely different than the charter airlines in all ways.

Landing one of these elusive and coveted jobs is no easy feat. Besides the numbers applying, there are talented, multilingual applicants from all over the globe.

Charter tends to hire within a domicile so you know you'll be flying near home without the dread of wondering where your base will be once training with the majors is complete.

Job security and the opportunity to stay in the sky beyond the 1-3 years that marks the death of many airline start-ups makes the draw to the majors, well, MAJOR.

I'm going to include the blogs that boost the chances of so many who wish to fly in case you may be among the ranks.

Having held every career type over my long, working years beginning when I was 15 at a men's clothing store as a cashier, I can tell you that my years at 35,000 feet were my happiest if not the most stressful on my feet.

The first airline I flew with was a charter flying vacationers to several tourist spots in Hawaii. These were 'turns'; no layover, just a very long 12-hour day with some time in the humid, pizza fragranced airports of Hawaii.

The second was a scheduled charter and a start-up where I was part of the team together with the FAA enlisted to qualify the airline so it would be licensed to fly.  Talk about nerves.

I got along very well with my FA Inspector, Fred. 

But when he and the charter's owners, management, and all the other FA's not part of the qualifying process were observing every move during our mock emergency runs, I was sweating the Mississippi into my uniform. We passed on the second mock run so all went well but the atmosphere in the cabin of that 757 could have been chainsawed; it was that heavy.

Considering this, I shouldn't be worried about a silly little group then 1 to 1 interview in a few days.

I am anyway.

My boyfriend thinks this is wonderful. He's willing to relo with me to a 'good' base and will be happy for me whether I make it or not. That isn't helping, but it's nice to know. He's a blessing as of December 18, 2012 when we met via POF. But that's another blog top for later if you care ;-D

To learn more about flying & interviewing, here's a few blogs I promised you:

http://www.indeed.com/forum/job/flight-attendant/Upcoming-UNITED-Flight-...

http://www.gadling.com/2010/01/20/galley-gossip-how-to-prepare-for-a-fli...