Author: Gareth

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Tips for an airline interview in English

8 tips for an airline interview.

We all know that interviews make us feel nervous at the best of times, but when you’re doing one in English when English isn’t your first language, it’s even more challenging. Of course there are things that you can do to help you feel less nervous.

First of all, when doing an aviation interview, you have to be aware of what the procedure is going to be; what is the first step in the process, what’s going to happen after that. The first thing that interviewees usually have to do is to hand in some paperwork to the company when they arrive to do an interview process. This verification process makes sure that everything is in order before beginning the interview process. Make sure that you have all of these documents ready before you leave for your interview process and have copies of them if needed. One thing you don’t want is a distraction because there’s a problem with your documentation. Be organised and have it all ready in advance.

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Structure: Future in the past 2

We talked previously about using the future in the past with be (in the past) + going to + infinitive verb to indicate a plan, prediction or expectation from a past perspective.

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Video answers: The little plane war

Here are the answers to last Friday’s video, enjoy!

Suggested ICAO level for video: 5+

  1. They were both commercial failures with relatively few planes sold.
  2. Nearly 70% of the planes coming into London City Airport are Embraer planes.
  3. Due to noise restrictions, the steep approach angle and short runway, there are few planes that can operate there as efficiently as the Embraer.
  4. It’s a big market because there are many smaller airports which would be best served with regional jets.
  5. One of the test aircraft had an uncontained engine failure during routine testing.
  6. The financial support of the governments of Canada and Quebec helped to save the programme.
  7. They lacked an order from an American airline, which would make or break the programme.
  8. They allegedly sold 75 of their planes to Delta for below cost price.
  9. Boeing filed a dumping petition in US courts and the courts put a 300% import tariff on the planes.
  10. Airbus acquired a 50.01% stake in the programme.
  11. Airbus is a marketing powerhouse and can help sell many more planes than Bombardier alone. However, with final assembly taking place at Airbus’ assembly line in US, it means that the CSeries planes might be classified as US planes, avoiding import tariffs.

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Video: The little plane war

This week’s video describes the war between Boeing and Bombardier over the CSeries jet. Watch to find out exactly what it was about.

Try to answer the following questions about the video and come back on Monday for the answers.

Suggested ICAO level for video: 5+

  1. How successful were Airbus’ A318 and Boeing’s 717?
  2. What proportion of London City Airport’s arrivals are Embraer planes?
  3. Why are the reasons for this?
  4. Why is the US a big market for small planes?
  5. What major setback did the CSeries programme have?
  6. What saved the programme after this setback?
  7. What kind of order did Bombardier lack?
  8. What did they do to fix this?
  9. How did Boeing react to this?
  10. What did Airbus do?
  11. How did this help?

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Have a great weekend!

The Little Plane War

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Structure: Relative clauses 2

Using relative clauses

In relative clauses 1 we looked at some of the basics of relative clauses. This time we’ll discuss another issue with them.

In some relative clauses it’s not necessary to use who, which, or that. You can use it if you want but you don’t have to. Let’s look at a couple of examples where it’s not necessary to use who and which.

The person (who) you met works for Emirates.
The book (which) you bought is expensive.

In these two examples we don’t have to use who and which. But how can we discover when we have to use who, which (or that) and we don’t have to? It depends on whether who, which (or that) is the subject or object of the verb. Very briefly, the subject of a sentence is the person or thing that performs an action. The object of a sentence is affected by the action. Look at the diagram below for more information.

As we can see, he performs the action and the plane is affected by the action (it is flown). Now let’s consider our examples above.

The person (who) you met works for Emirates.

In this sentence you met the person, so ‘you’ is the subject and ‘a person’ is the object is the verb ‘met’. Our rule is that if who, which (or that) is the object of our verb, then we don’t have to use it. Let’s look at our second example from above.

The book (which) you bought is expensive.

In this sentence you bought the book, so ‘you’ is the subject (‘you’ performed the action) of the verb and ‘the book’ is the object of our verb, then once again we don’t have to use which. To fully understand this idea about the subject and object of a verb can take time, so if you’re not sure it’s perfectly correct to use who, which (or that) all the time in relative clauses. When you become more comfortable with subjects and objects of verbs you can decide whether or not to use who, which (or that) in relative clauses.

Now try to write some examples of your own to help clarify when you don’t have to use who, which (or that).

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Video answers: How to design impenetrable airport security

Here are the answers to last Friday’s video, enjoy!

Suggested ICAO level for video: 5+

  1. There’s no evidence to suggest that the TSA have prevented a terrorist attack.
  2. ICAO doesn’t offer suggestions on how to secure an airport, instead it defines objectives without suggesting how to achieve those objectives.
  3. It means that a place may look secure when in reality it isn’t completely.
  4. Israel has the best airport security in the world.
  5. It’s different because it is based more on the human factor than on scanning equipment (although they still use this too).
  6. Cars are checked before getting to the airport, plain clothes officers move around the check-in area and even before people check-in they pass through in interview which will determine their risk level.
  7. Young Arab men travelling alone are the highest risk group.
  8. After bags are checked in they’re placed in a pressure chamber which simulates the pressure on board an aircraft at cruise altitudes, the idea is to set off any explosives designed to detonate when a place is in flight.
  9. Air marshals are put on every flight.
  10. Flares are deployed if an incoming missile is detected.
  11. That’s hard to measure as Ben Gurion airport only has 20 million passengers per year and doesn’t deal with the volume of some of the bigger international airports. Racial profiling could not be used in other airports around the world as it is illegal.
  12. The number of people travelling has declined by 6% since September 11th 2001.
  13. It’s hard to know, maybe airport security works by deterring terrorists instead of catching them.

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