AirlinePrep course (BALPA) pre-trainingairline-selection
14 May 2026
While I was at Pilot Careers live, I visited the BALPA stand to find out a little bit more about them and what they had to offer. I hadn’t realised you can be a member for free while undertaking training under their next-gen program, so I signed up. They also had a competition open, to win a place on an AirlinePrep course normally worth nearly £400, so I entered that too.
I don’t tend to have much luck with these kinds of competitions, so wasn’t really expecting to win. However, a few days later, I got an e-mail to say I’d won a place!
The course was focused on helping you to prepare and pass an airline selection process, & hosted by current airline recruiters.
It was hosted at BALPA’s HQ, on Bath road, almost exactly at the midpoint of Heathrow’s 09L/27R runway & started at 10am.
I’d travelled up the day before and got an AirBnB for around £20 (bargain) near to Heathrow so was able to have a leisurely start to the day rather than a nearly 3 hour drive from Exeter. I arrived at around 9:40 & was greeted by the team at BALPA who got me checked in and showed me to where we’d be having the course. There were a few others already there, who were out on the balcony, which had an incredible view of Heathrow, with the aircraft lifting off almost directly in front.
There was quite a mix of people, some who were already well into their ATPL theory, some A-level students (who had exams the following day), a couple of others like me who were a little older & changing career, and also one already qualified pilot who had been flying for an airline, but was now looking for a new job. After a bit of a chat out on the balcony, it soon became apparent that all of us were competition winners, from Pilot Careers Live, and there was around 10 of us in total.
We were then introduced to Fred, who was going to be leading the course for the day. He is a current captain with BA Euroflyer, airline recruiter with many years experience, and part of the AirlinePrep company. We did a bit of a round the room/intro, where during that, he was already giving out some little nuggets of information and advice, about how to present yourself & even place your name tag if given one.
We were all asked what we’d hope to get our of the course during the day, which Fred wrote up on the board, and then said that he’d tailor the content to fit that, and we’d come back to it at the end of the day to make sure we’d covered it all.
Then we got into the main content of the course. I won’t go into great details on here, as I’d highly suggest you go and take this course yourself, so it will be up-to-date, and tailored somewhat to those in the room too, but I will give a bit of a high level overview of what we covered.
It started out with a bit of a presentation and background into how pilot recruitment has evolved over the years, and why the types of assessments are now done, backed up with some real world experience, and stories of why that matters.
Next we moved onto a practice of the group exercises often done during airline interviews. The group was split into two, with half doing the exercise, with the other half observing. Fred also sat and observed, taking notes as if he was doing it for real. I was in the observing group for this.
The scenario was a sinking ship where you only had enough space on the lifeboat to save some of the people, and so had to make a choice of who to save. They did a really good job of it, but afterwards we analysed it as a group, with Fred also giving some incredibly valuable insights, both to the group as a whole, but also directly to individuals on how they could improve or come across better.
After that, the presentation continued for a little while going over some more tips and tricks for the group exercise as well as some more general tips for the interview it’s self, and the sort of preparation you need to do beforehand.
We then broke for lunch, which was excellent, and provided for free by BALPA, giving us all a chance to chat a bit more to each other about how far along we’d all got with our training and of course some more time out on the balcony watching the planes.
After lunch, we dived much deeper into the interview, going over the pilot competencies and some techniques for answering questions around those. A few example questions were put up onto the board, and we all got to pick one to have a go at answering in front of the group (this was optional, but everyone elected to have a go) Fred then gave each individual a highly detailed bit of feedback about how he would have scored the answer as well as any advice and tips on how to improve or tailor the answer to meet the competencies more effectively - this was not short, a good 5 minutes, at least, dedicated to personalised feedback on each person’s answer.
After a quick break for a drink (and some more plane watching on the balcony) we then went into the final part of the day. This was a presentation specifically on the group exercises. Again loads of useful tips and tricks in there, going over what the assessors are actually looking for.
The other half of the group (which I was in) then got to have a go at an exercise with the people who’d done it earlier, getting the chance to observe. Our scenario was that we’d survived a small plane crash into a dense forest, and had to decide both what to do, and which items from the wreckage to take with us (with some limitations about how much can be carried etc). Towards the end of the task, we were also fed some more information and the option to change some of the items, which impacted the list we’d mostly decided on at that point.
Much like with the first group, afterwards we analysed how we’d done together, with Fred again giving some incredibly useful feedback to us collectively and individually.
After that there were a few more slides to wrap up the day, with some more tips on what to do once you have your licence and are job hunting, as well as what questions to ask the airline at the end of the interview, and finally some information about the services available to BALPA members, such as the crew-connected scheme where you can be put in touch with existing pilots (who’ve volunteered) ahead of an airline selection day (among other things).
The whole course was fantastic, for me, the chance to practice answering a realistic question was just incredibly invaluable. I’ve sat on both sides of an interview panel many times in my IT career, so have a pretty good idea what’s being looked for when it comes to recruiting software developers, but it’s obviously quite different for an airline, so I got absolutely loads from that part of the course, & now know exactly how to tailor my experience and examples that I’ve used in previous interview answers, to fit the airline world.
Overall an incredibly useful day! And as mentioned I’d highly recommend you look into at attending one of the AirlinePrep courses if you have a selection coming up either for a flight school or an airline, as it’d be certainly be worth your time & money to give you a head start. I’m obviously yet to have one for real at the moment, but I feel far more confident going into an assessment day having taken this course.