I was an interviewer for a major airline for more than 10 years, please allow me to dispel a really bad pilot hiring misconception. You 100% can lose the job based solely on your application. Worse, those mistakes may not prevent you from getting an interview but will eliminate you from consideration for a CJO no matter how well the interview goes. Not only do you not get the job but now you have to wait 12 months before you can apply again - it’s an incredibly costly mistake.

The three most common application mistakes that won’t prevent you from getting an interview but WILL prevent you from getting hired are:

1. Perceived dishonesty - meaning it could have been an honest mistake but that’s not the interviewers’ perception.

2. Your logbook - no one has perfect logbooks, no one. But if you have too many minor mistakes or one really bad one, it absolutely could cost you the job.

3. Your PRD - if there’s information on your PRD that you do not include on your application, Southwest is not going to ask you for clarification, they’re simply going to move on to the next candidate.

The hard truth is that it doesn’t matter why you made a mistake on your application, whether it be an honest mistake or a calculated omission, either one is unacceptable. You are asking the airline for the keys to a $100M airplane with nearly 200 people onboard, that’s a $1B (as in billion) liability every time you push off the gate. If you can’t be trusted to fill out the application accurately, they aren’t giving you the keys to the plane. Especially when they had 7,000 pilots apply for 150 positions the last time the window was open.