Fly Higher: A Look Inside the Pilot Selection Office of Delta Airlines

The sun was just beginning to rise as I got out of my car to a view of the airport as well as the sight and sound of planes taking off and landing. Looking out, you could see the blue coating with the red logo for Delta Air Lines, whose headquarters are located right next to Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson Airport.

It is a chilly and windy morning in Atlanta, Georgia as employees from all different departments of Delta are making their way into work for another day.

Founded in 1925, Delta Air Lines is one of the major airlines in the United States. It operates 5,400 flights daily, and flies into 325 countries over six continents.

Captain Barry Holmes, former naval airman and the manager of Pilot Selection, sits down in his office. He has been a Delta Pilot for over 30 years, but growing up, being a pilot was not always a part of his plans. He was a communications major in college.

“Out of college, I didn’t really know what I wanted to do,” said Holmes. “I applied to Delta to be a flight attendant, not even knowing what that was.

Then, somebody asked him if he ever thought about being a pilot. He had never thought about becoming one but gave it some thought. After receiving encouragement from his mom, he decided to go into the Navy as a pilot.

“A month after finishing college, I was in the mud doing pushups while getting screamed at by a drill sergeant,” he recalls. “It was some of the hardest four months of my life.”

The Selection Process:

It is an interview day. Prior to this quarter, Delta was interviewing around 35 applicants per month. Recently, Delta has been interviewing about 48 applicants per week. That is more than usual, as it is a very busy time for the Pilot Selection team. There is a new wave of pilots coming into the company. In 1989, the company had a major haul of new employees hired. Now, a lot of those employees are retiring either this year or in a few years to come, so the need for more pilots has increased for Delta.

Holmes pulls up the profile of a few candidates. In order from left to right of the screen was the pilot’s name, the date he/she applied for the position, and the last time their resume or application was updated. He turns the screen over to me. Pointing to the different parts of the applications, he shows me how long some of these pilots wait to get the call for an interview.

“As you can see,” Holmes says. “This person first applied to Delta in January of 2018, and he still has not gotten a call for an interview.”

Then, he points to the column on the right, which shows when they last updated their application. The example showed the last time this person updated their application the week before. It just shows how competitive it is.

“We check everything that the candidates have done dating back to their high school GPA,” said Holmes.

Because there is so much to consider, some candidates may lie on their applications because they think it will give them a better chance to get their opportunity. Holmes says he knows that because they will go back and update their application and resume after they have been selected.

“For example, one guy may put on his application that he had a 3.2 GPA in college before they were selected, and before his interview day, he changed his GPA to a 2.3,” said Holmes. “That leaves a bad taste in our mouth even before they interview.”

In order to check all of the candidate’s record, Pilot Selection Sr. Program Coordinator of Compliance, Laura Bales does what they call a PRIA check. PRIA stands for the Pilot Record Improvement Act of 1996. This law was created in response to the Colgan Airlines crash which was attributed to pilot error.

“It turns out that after a plane crash from an airline that no longer exists, the pilots were not tested properly and should not have been flying that day,” said Bales.

After a pilot is hired, they must go through a series of background checks, a psychological test, and a drug test to make sure that they are fit to fly a plane. Also, every pilot is required to retrain every nine months to make sure they are still fit to fly.

By the end of the interview day, the candidates know whether they have been hired or are not selected. If they fail the test but pass the interview, or vice versa, then they get an automatic second chance in six months. If they fail both, then they can re-apply in one year; however, they will basically be back to the beginning stages.

Interview Day:

At around 8:00 a.m., it was time for the morning brief. Hopeful pilots sat anxiously outside in the waiting area, anticipating their long-awaited interview. There is a lot riding on this day. Dreams are on the line. For some of these pilots, it is there last chance. This is an opportunity for a huge pay raise, some of these pilots make as low as $35,000 per year at the airline they currently fly for. If they are hired by Delta, they will be making six figures almost right away.

As soon as Holmes walks into the waiting area, the nine or 10 candidates stand up. “Congratulations on being selected,” said Holmes.

He continues the rest of his brief. “Some of you will begin the day by taking your test, while some of you will begin with the interview. You will have up to three hours to take the test and the interview will take about one hour. After you finish, I suggest you go across the street to the cafeteria. There are many choices to choose from. You will drive yourself crazy if you sit in here waiting for your fate.”

The hopeful pilots broke into their groups. The testing room was a computer lab with about ten cubicles: five on each side of the room. Each cubicle had a computer, noise cancelling headphones, Test Proctor, Brundi Bowden addressed what was about to happen. With how often Pilot Selection has been interviewing recently, Bowden’s job may seem a bit repetitive.

“I have gone through the directions so many times, that I can read the directions without looking at the paper,” she joked as she looked through the glass window at the candidates taking their test.

The other pilots that were not testing went to interview. The interview room is a small room with a circular table in the middle with about a dozen little water bottles for each candidate to have during their interview. There are multiple interview teams on hand. Each interview team has three interviewers: an active pilot, a retired pilot and a Human Resources component, like Sarah Chisholm, Human Resources interviewer.

The interview is broken down into about three parts. Chisholm and her team look at their question sheet with a score after every section. “I usually start them out with questions about their application,” said Chisholm. “Then, these guys, she points to the other pilots, will ask the candidates questions about their training, and what they would do in certain scenarios and how they would handle those situations.”

The Results:

Usually around 3:30 p.m., the interview teams know who did and who did not pass their interviews, and the test results are in as well. Back in Holmes’ office, one of the interviewers brings in the red folders.

“This is the hardest part of my job,” said Holmes. “Having to tell the candidates that they did not make it is the part of my job that I hate.”

His predecessor used to break the candidates down into two groups. The candidates that passed would go into one room, and the candidates that did not pass would stay in the lobby. It was a really tough way to do things, and Holmes wanted to do it a different way. Instead of separating the successful candidates from the unsuccessful ones, he takes every candidate one at a time to tell them their fate.

Brian Petricone has been at Delta for a little over three years. When we met, he had just returned from one of his trips, and was wearing his pilot uniform; a navy-blue double-breasted coat with a white dress shirt and a pink tie that the pilots can wear for the month of October for Breast Cancer Awareness. He remembers his interview day very well.

“June 11, 2016, is the day I was hired,” he recalled while eating his lunch. “Every pilot remembers the day that they were hired. The whole day, your adrenalin is going. I remember I took the test, which was about two and a half hours and then I had a one-hour interview. Then, you just sit and wait until around 3:30. By the end of the interview day, you are mentally drained, but you know whether you have been hired or fail.

At the time, Arnie Kraby was the head of Pilot Selection. Petricone was sitting in the waiting area of the Pilot Selection office. Kraby walked outside to share the results.

“If I call your name, come with me to the conference room,” Petricone recalls Kraby saying. His name was one of the names called. He was taken into a conference room. The hopeful pilots sat around the conference table in the middle of the room.

“Wait right here for a few minutes until I come back,” said Kraby.

Everybody sat there quietly, waiting for Kraby to come back. “Nobody really knew what was about to happen,” said Petricone.

A few minutes later, Kraby came back into the room, holding a stack of red folders. When everyone saw the folders, they knew. Some men were crying, others were hugging each other and thanking the staff. It was a dream come true that day, and something that those pilots never forget.

Now, Petricone is a management pilot at Delta, meaning he flies when he can, but mostly works in the office, mentoring new hires. He usually flies about three to five days per month. When he is not flying, he is managing and mentoring new hire pilots.