British Airways Speedbird

Stage 2: Waterside — Group Exercise, Multitasking and the Flight School Interview

Lesson 3 of 4•2 min read•4 exercises

Stage two is where the selection becomes tangible: deeper psychometric testing online, then a half-day at BA's Waterside head office with a group exercise and a multitasking assessment, plus an online interview for your flight school place. Skyborne's own FAQ confirms its assessments use the Aon testing platform — the same module families covered in depth by the Aon (cut-e) Test Preparation course on this platform.

What each element measures

The group exercise: multi-crew behaviours — structuring the task, communicating clearly, involving quieter candidates and staying constructive under time pressure. BA's own guidance is explicit that behaviours, not technical brilliance, set candidates apart.
The multitasking assessment: how your accuracy survives divided attention. Candidate reports describe a joystick tracking element combined with timed secondary tasks — unverified detail, but consistent with what every airline multitasking assessment measures.
The flight school interview: a competency-based conversation about motivation, learning and resilience — remember the schools are choosing trainees they will spend 70 intensive weeks with.

How to prepare

Train the multitasking family seriously: the Multitasking Test builds the tracking-plus-secondary-task pattern, with the Hand-Eye-Foot and Complex Choice Reaction tests strengthening the coordination and response layers underneath it. For the group exercise, practise structured discussion wherever you can and aim to be the candidate who organises, not the one who dominates. Prepare six to eight true competency stories in a situation-action-result shape, and stay consistent with your stage-one questionnaires — with a three-attempt lifetime cap on this stage, every visit to Waterside has to count.

What the test looks like

A worked example from each exercise in this lesson, exactly as the test presents it.

Multitasking Test

Example: what the test looks like

You do two things at once. On one side you scan grids of four-digit numbers and mark both cells of every duplicate pair within a row. On the other, questions are spoken out loud — never shown — and you click the cell holding the answer. The short loop below plays itself: watch a spoken question get looked up and answered while a number pair is marked.

Auto-demo

0:00

“What profession does Elizabeth Carter have?”

Spoken · not shown

Numbers — mark both cells of every duplicate pair in a row

Answers — listen to the question, then click the right cell

Some questions are timed: instead of answering straight away you're told a moment on the clock — “answer at 2 minutes and 15 seconds” — and must click within ±5 seconds of it. The closer your timing, the more points.

In the real test the question is only heard, so headphones are required. Your score blends three streams — number grids, normal questions and timed questions — so you can't win by focusing on one and ignoring the others, and clicking far more answers than there are questions scales your score down.

Hand-Eye-Foot Coordination Test

Complex Choice Reaction Test

Big Five Personality Test

Practice the relevant tests

Assessment-grade exercises to practice the relevant competences.

2:14

PilotVeterinarianTeacher

Multitasking Test

Two tasks at once: scan number grids for duplicate pairs while answering spoken questions from your phonebook, agenda, mental math and word categories — some of which must be answered at an exact moment on the clock.

6 minIntellectual

4:00

Hand-Eye-Foot Coordination Test

A real-time three-axis coordination test. Keep the aircraft centred on the target runway while periodic disturbances push it left/right, forward/backward, and roll it from side to side. Best practised with a game controller or rudder pedals mapped to the three control axes.

6 minNeuro-SensomotoricGamepad

Complex Choice Reaction Test

Compare a target figure against four reference shapes and decide within 2.5 seconds whether it matches one of them.

5 minNeuro-Sensomotoric

1 / 120

1.Worry about things

Very Inaccurate

Moderately Inaccurate

Neither Accurate Nor Inaccurate

Moderately Accurate

Very Accurate

2.Make friends easily

Very Inaccurate

Moderately Inaccurate

Neither Accurate Nor Inaccurate

Moderately Accurate

Very Accurate

Big Five Personality Test

A scientifically grounded personality inventory based on the IPIP-NEO-120. Rate 120 statements to map your profile across the five major personality domains — Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism — each broken down into six facets.

10 minPsychological

Ready to put this into practice?

Create an account to play the real assessment exercises and track your progress through this course.

Get Full Access Sign in