Advanced Interview Course USA is here

Advanced Interview Course was built around how airlines recruit in Europe, the Middle East and Asia. The competencies, the communication work and the interview technique travel well. The career path does not. A pilot in Ohio building time toward the regionals does not start from the same place as a cadet applying to a European carrier, and the interviews along the way are different too.

So we built a dedicated course. Advanced Interview Course USA (AIC USA) is now open, with content made for the American market from the ground up, and I am delivering it alongside someone who has spent her career hiring pilots in the States.

 → Check out AIC USA here!

The path to an airline seat in the United States is unlike anywhere else. You finish flight school with a couple of hundred hours, and the airlines want fifteen hundred. The years in between are not a waiting room. They are a series of jobs, and almost every one of them starts with an interview.

You interview to become a CFI. You interview with a Part 91 owner, a corporate flight department, a 135 charter operator or a cargo outfit. You interview for a cadet program, then for a regional, and eventually for a major or a legacy carrier. Each of those employers is looking for something different, and each uses a different interview format. A pilot who only starts preparing when the regionals call has already sat four or five interviews unprepared.

AIC USA is built for the whole route, from the first CFI interview to the majors.

I am Guillaume Debauchez. I flew for British Airways, was a captain at Emirates, and have recruited pilots for a major airline. Advanced Interview Course Worldwide (AIC Worldwide) is the course I built from that experience, and its structure is the backbone of AIC USA.

For the American content, I have teamed up with Hilary Patterson. Hilary has more than twenty-five years in aviation. She started flying as a teenager, became a flight instructor, served in the US Air Force, then returned to instructing and moved into Part 135 operations. When she lost her medical, she stayed in aviation and spent fifteen years as a full-time pilot recruiter, conducting thousands of interviews across Part 121 and Part 135 passenger and cargo operations.

She has sat in every chair this course prepares you for: the student's, the instructor's, the line pilot's and the recruiter's. That is why the US modules are hers.

AIC USA keeps the architecture that has already helped pilots get hired worldwide, and rebuilds the content around US careers.

The recruiter and the research. You learn the competency framework airlines use, how recruiters grade, and who actually hires you at each stage, whether that is a flight school owner, a corporate chief pilot or a 121 recruitment team. Then you learn how to research your target employer properly, with Hilary showing what to look for and which red flags to watch at flight schools, Part 91 owners, corporate departments, 135 operators, cargo carriers and the majors.

Career Choices in the USA. This module exists nowhere else in our catalog. Hilary maps every path from flight school to the airlines: instructing, Part 91, corporate, 135, cargo, cadet programs and the regionals. For each one, she covers what the job is really like, what makes you marketable at that stage, and which interview format is waiting for you. In her words: "How you bridge that gap is one of the biggest career decisions you'll make, and most pilots make it blind."

Communication and the pilot role. The effective communication module carries over in full: first impressions, using your voice, being clear under pressure. The pilot role module covers decision-making, intervention, workload and customer care, with Hilary breaking down how each of those looks for a CFI, a regional first officer, a corporate or charter pilot, and someone flying cargo overnight.

Interview technique. The experience sheet, rebuilt with examples from American careers [LINK: experience sheet → blog article "Should You Tell an Airline Recruiter You Prepared for the Interview?"]. The classic interview, which matters enormously in the US because most CFI, corporate and 135 interviews take that format, along with how to generate leads through networking, job fairs and in-person follow-up. The hybrid, scenario-based interview. And interview aikido, our method for turning difficult questions to your advantage, including the ones US recruiters ask often, such as explaining a checkride failure.

Your profile. Specific guidance for CFIs, low-time pilots, experienced pilots, captains, military pilots moving to civilian flying [LINK: military pilots → blog article "Why Military Pilots Fail Airline Selection"], and career changers, including first responders, law enforcement officers and A&P mechanics, who are common second-career candidates in the US.

The psychologist. The module on personality assessments used at the majors, with the 16PF personality questionnaire and a personal debrief included as standard.

Two bonus modules. Professional behavior and CRM, covering the habits every operator wants to see, from your first day at flight school to the flight deck of a major.

Knowledge does not get you hired on its own. What makes AIC USA different is the weekly practice sessions. Every week, candidates meet online: one or two perform while the others observe, and everyone gets precise, actionable feedback. It is where what you learned in the modules turns into something you can do under pressure.

You also join the ASP community of pilots preparing for selections in the US and around the world, with Hilary, me and the rest of the instruction team inside it. You get access to our airline research sheets, and the course runs in your browser and on our iOS and iPadOS app, online or offline.

AIC USA is for any pilot building a career in the United States who has an interview coming, or will have one soon. That covers a student pilot planning their first CFI job, a time-builder weighing 135 against corporate, a regional first officer preparing for the majors, and a military pilot planning the move to the airlines.

If your resume needs the same work as your interview technique, Resume and Cover Letter Course is the US companion to AIC USA. For pilots who want individual coaching on top of the course, AIC Ultimate includes AIC USA.

You can see the full curriculum, hear from Hilary, and enroll on the course page. If you want to see the results our candidates get before deciding, the testimonials page is a good place to look [LINK: testimonials → Testimonials page].

And if you are still a year or two from your first interview, start anyway. In the US, the interview that decides your career is rarely the first one you sit. It helps to be ready for all of them.