Well lets begin with myself. I am a 23 year old from Bangalore whose sole purpose in life is to enjoy life itself period. I got my engineers degree in 2006 but ever since I was a kid i always wanted to fly. For some damn reason I always thought I couldn’t be a pilot because i wore glasses (come on who in their right minds would let you fly a plane at hundreds of miles an hour if you are wearing glasses).Thankfully by coincidence like a gift from god I met a pilot in the lift and all he said was get a class 2 medical checkup from any aviation medicine doctor ( http://dgca.nic.in/medical/class2-ind.htm ) and see how it goes. Taking his advise i went to see a doctor and well I found out i could fly with glasses AS LONG AS MY VISION IS CORRECTABLE TO 6/6.
The medical check is simple.You go to the doctor in an empty stomach and get a blood test done. Then comes the chest x-ray followed by an eye and ent checkup.You also have to do a hearing test and thats about it. If you are overweight however there are a couple of extra tests that need to be done. Once that was done and i officially cleared it it took 2 months for the DGCA to process my papers and give me my class 2 medical certificate.
In the mean time Air India announced that it started a cadet pilot programme. I was hesitant at first thinking who would want to do a government job but sent the application and hoping my application was okay. Then from out of no where in Nov 2006 Spicejetannounced its cadet pilot programme. I jumped into it and surely they gave a response almost immediately. I gave the test in the Bangalore center. It was early and there I was half asleep with no preparation whatsoever surrounded by a bunch of people who were taking big stuff about passing the papers and clearing the scary class 1 medical and what not. And here I stood a complete stranger to every thing about flying. I walked around saw the competition and i guess there were about 80-100 people all yapping about flying. I just stepped aside and sat in my car and listened to the radio n checking out a quantitative analysis book by agarwal.(not what i would recommend but its great for developing speed.)
Once we got in things became clearer. They basically said that there were 5 rounds psychometry, intelligence, math aptitude, mechanical aptitude & spacial orientation. Personality involved them giving you a scenario and you had to choose between yes,no or maybe. Intelligence was tricky. They give you 3 diagrams and ask you to choose the 4th from the choices. This is in any IQ test. math was basic add, subtract, multiply & divide. Mech involved pulley and gear problems and the one which i sucked at. spacial involved dice puzzles which was is to see your 3D imagination.
Honestly if you ask me I feel the psychometric round is the most important. They are not looking for brilliant people to fly a plane cause lets face it its not the toughest thing in the world that requires the best minds in the world. Its flying. All you have to do is go from point A to point B safely without getting lost. Thats it.They are looking for people who are responsible and who can work in a team and most importantly can take the right decision in a tight situation and not panic. Thats what a pilot is. He is just a man who does 10 things at the same time (you have to maintain within + or – 100 feet altitude and within + or - 10 knots airspeed at any given time while at the same time make radio calls and brief instrument approaches and most importantly know where you are.this is considering all your instruments and engines are working fine). In bad situations things get even more interesting. In multi engines you have split seconds to take corrective action or you will spin to the ground and burn to ashes. This is reality and not an exaggeration. So unless you are upto it you will not pass the personallity round.
Then came the next round which was the psychologist round. Here I met this psychologist who basically went through my psychometry round and with that she was able to tell me exactly the kind of person I am which was freaky. Just be honest in this round cause there are no secrets you can hide.
After all that finally came the interview round. Here for the 1st time i saw the people who got through. Of the 80- 100 who wrote the paper only 15-17 came to the final round. And the best part was that none of the people who boasted about flying were there which felt amazing. The interview is straight forward. All you have to do is prove to them that you are there for the love of flying and you would be honest and loyal cause thats all they are looking for. They don’t want any wiseasses just simple people.
Days later I got a call and that was it. The new beginning….
