Delta Air Lines

Delta Air Lines is one of the largest airlines in the world, flying close to a thousand aircraft from hubs at Atlanta — the busiest airport on earth — plus Detroit, Minneapolis-St Paul, Salt Lake City, New York JFK and LaGuardia, Los Angeles, Seattle and Boston. Its fleet mixes the Airbus A220 and A321neo on domestic routes with A330neos, A350s and Boeing 767s on international ones, and it is a founding member of SkyTeam. Unusually among US majors it owns its own oil refinery and a large maintenance business, and it has one of the industry's most stable pilot pipelines.

Flying for Delta

Delta hires mainline first officers who already hold an FAA ATP certificate and substantial jet or turbine time, most arriving from regional carriers or the military. Propel, its Pilot Career Path Program, is the structured route in from much earlier: a collegiate path for students and recent graduates of partner university aviation programmes, an affiliate flight school path for those already instructing as CFIs, and a company path open to Delta employees of three years or more who hold a private pilot certificate. Propel's distinguishing feature is a single interview that carries through to a qualified job offer at Delta and at its subsidiary Endeavor Air, so a candidate is selected once rather than at every rung of the ladder.

That single interview is preceded by an online assessment, and Delta names its provider plainly: competitive candidates are invited to take the Aon online assessment covering personality and skill-based competencies. Later stages add the MMPI-2 personality inventory at Delta's Atlanta headquarters and a virtual interview with a company psychologist. Because the whole career path hinges on one selection event that happens years before the flying job does, the cognitive and personality components of that assessment carry disproportionate weight — and both are formats a candidate can rehearse.