If you are like me, you probably like to study for any big, upcoming interviews. When I was preparing for my flight attendant interviews, I had to scour the internet looking for websites that listed off some of the most common interview questions asked by airline recruiters.
To save you from having to do that too, we have created a comprehensive interview study guide with thirty of the most commonly asked flight attendant interview questions and examples on how to best answer them.
If you work your way through this comprehensive guide, we are confident that you will be well prepared for your upcoming airline interview!
Let’s get started!
Table of Contents
Most Common Questions
In this section, I will cover ten of the most common interview questions posed to prospective flight attendants.
1) Why do you want to be a flight attendant?
This is probably the most common question asked at cabin crew interviews.
The first thing you need to know about answering this question; do not, under any circumstances, say its because you want the flight benefits!
Recruiters will already assume you love to travel, so give them a better more creative reason that simultaneously highlights why you’d be a great fit for the job.
✅ Possible Answer to “Why do you want to be a flight attendant?”:
I am looking for a job that keeps me on my toes. I am really attracted to the airline lifestyle because each day on the job will be different, exciting, and engaging. I know this will make me excited to come to work each day and meet new people and create new connections with my passengers and colleagues.
This other article goes more in-depth: Best Way to Answer ‘Why Do You Want to Be a Flight Attendant?’
2) Tell me about yourself
Be sure to highlight your interests and strengths that contribute to making you the perfect future flight attendant.
Great traits to emphasize include but are not limited to, patients, great interpersonal skills, flexibility, problem-solving, and then end the answer with a relatable personal anecdote.
✅ Possible Answer to “Tell me about yourself”:
My friends tell me that I am an easy-going extrovert. I will start a conversation with any stranger that lets me. This has led me to seek out volunteering opportunities in my free time that give me the opportunity to meet new people and led a helping hand. Currently, I’m volunteering at the local nursing home, and I just adore talking to the residents and listening to their amazing life stories. Other than that, I’m a sucker for ice cream and cheesy Romcoms.
This other article goes more in-depth: How to Answer “Tell Me About Yourself” in a Flight Attendant Interview
3) Why do you want to work for us?
Pick something about the company that you find important and then explain why it aligns with your own personal values and why it made their company stick out during your job search.
✅ Possible Answer to “Why do you want to work for us?”:
When I learned that your airline does voluntary relief flights to bring much-needed supplies to communities impacted by natural disasters, I knew I wanted to work for your company. I really admired how you flew supplies to Puerto Rico after the hurricane last year and I figure any company that cares that much about people must be a great company to work for.
4) What do you know about airlines?
To successfully answer this question you will need to emphasize the fact that you researched the airline industry, and you understand what you are applying to get yourself into.
You will want to make it clear that you know about how the seniority system works, that you will be expected to serve reserve, that you might have to work on holidays and be far away from family, etc.
✅ Possible Answer to “What do you know about airlines?”:
I know that airlines are a critical industry and that working for one is more of a lifestyle than it is a typical job and therefore, requires some sacrifices that a 9-5 job might not, like missing my parent’s birthday, or not being home for Halloween. I know that seniority is everything and that a large portion of my life will revolve around crew scheduling. The prospect of having a job so exciting and essential is really appealing to me.
5) What would you bring to our company?
This is an opportunity to brag about your skills a bit.
Highlight special skills and core competencies you have that would make you a great flight attendant.
Can you speak multiple languages? Mention that!
Do you have advanced medical training, bring it up!
Do you have extraordinary experiences that have prepared you for being a flight attendant? Now is the time to tell that story!
✅ Possible Answer to “What would you bring to our company?”:
In addition to the fact that I speak fluent German, I would bring training and experience as a former wilderness first responder to the table, that has equipped me to respond to intense situations with a reassuring cool-headedness, and ability to work together to make sure everyone stays safe, happy, and healthy.
6) In your opinion, what does good customer service look like?
Think of a time when you received great customer service from someone.
Then tell that story.
Avoid talking about a time when you provided the customer service.
✅ Possible Answer:
One time when I was studying abroad, I was trying desperately to find black beans in a popular German supermarket and just had no clue where they might be. One of the clerks saw me looking lost and came over to try to help me. I was tired and emotionally exhausted from struggling through a language I wasn’t fluent in yet, and when I couldn’t figure out the German word for beans I sank to the ground and just started to cry in front of that poor clerk! Her response will forever be what I strive to provide my customers with when it comes to customer service. She got on her knee gave me a little squeeze on the shoulder and told me in the simplest German possible to “show her” and pointed to my phone. I brought up a picture of a can of beans and she walked with me to get what I needed. She was patient with me, empathetic to the fact that I was struggling to communicate, and helpful. I strive to always be patient, empathetic, and helpful when it comes to providing good customer service.
7) What Is Your Greatest Weakness?
Be honest!
Pick one that relates to the job.
When answering identify your weakness, be honest with why it might impact your job performance, and then describe what steps you have already been taking to overcome that weakness and what you will do to minimize its impact on your ability to do your job well.
✅ Possible Answer to “What Is Your Greatest Weakness?”:
I tend to get a bit competitive at work, and have recognized that not all of my colleagues are keen to turn accomplishing our work into a game. To make sure I don’t become that obnoxious coworker, I have learned to ask my colleagues if they would enjoy a little friendly competition before I turn picking up empty cups into a game.
This question is admittedly a tricky one, if you would like more help learning how to answer it well, check out our article dedicated entirely to answering it: Cabin Crew Best Answers: “What is Your Greatest Weakness”
8) How would you handle a difficult passenger?
Walk through the steps you would take to de-escalate the situation, make a connection with the passenger, and resolve things to the best of your ability.
✅ Possible Answer to “How would you handle a difficult passenger?”:
If the passenger is being difficult because they are upset, or because their needs are not being met, I would start by asking the passenger how I can help and then I would listen with empathy. Most of the time people just want to be heard and will settle down once they realize they are being seen. In these cases, it’s usually good to connect with someone by relating to how they’re feeling. Once I know what the problem causing the difficulty is and have established some sort of report with the person, I would work with them to create a solution.
9) Do you work better alone or in a team?
You work better in a team.
If you don’t, fake it until you make it and then bid for galley positions like your life depends on it.
✅ Possible Answer to “Do you work better alone or in a team?”:
I really enjoy working with other people. I find it fulfilling to work alongside my colleagues to accomplish a shared goal or task. It is especially fun to get to know your colleagues and establish workplace friendships. It makes the workday so much more enjoyable compared to being isolated.
10) Are you willing to relocate?
Yes, you are!
✅ Possible Answer:
I am more than happy to relocate to any airport that I might end up based at. I see it as an exciting opportunity to live somewhere new!
Personality Related Questions
In this section, I am going to focus on three more examples of the common personality-related questions that may come up during your flight attendant interview.
11) How would your colleagues describe you?
This one is easy; you just have to answer it honestly and positively.
✅ Possible Answer:
My colleagues would describe me as warm, approachable, and reliable. They seem to enjoy chatting with me during the workday, and we get along well.
12) How do you manage stress?
Be honest, if it is a challenge for you but make sure to clearly state your coping mechanisms.
If you are cool as a cucumber, give an example to back this up.
✅ Possible Answer to “How do you manage stress?”:
Managing stress can be hard for everyone. What I have found works for me personally is taking a moment to stop and think about the situation causing me stress. Staying present and making sure I logically understand what I need to do to make things better has been a successful way for me to make stressful times in my life manageable.
13) If you could change one thing about your personality, what would it be?
Answer honestly but make it light and relatable.
This is not the place to air a fatal flaw, do that with your therapist.
✅ Possible Answer:
I have always envied artistically creative people. I have always wanted to be the kind of person who could create something beautiful or be inspired to write a novel. Maybe I’ll never become a famous painter, but I do look for little ways to spark some more creativity within me.
Situational Questions
In this section, I will go over three situational questions that recruiters like to ask. These questions are designed to gauge how you would respond to common in-flight challenges.
If these examples aren’t enough, we have a more detailed article about scenario questions: 5 Airline Scenarios: How Would You Handle These Cases?
14) You notice two passengers getting into a heated argument, one is complaining because the other has lowered their seatback. What would you do?
These situations are tricky, but a basic formula for answering any questions involving passenger disagreements, however they might be posed is to focus on de-escalating, empathizing, and finding a solution.
✅ Possible Answer:
The first thing I would do in this situation is to see if there were any open seats on the plane that I could potentially move one of the passengers to, so I could separate them. If that was not possible, I would work on trying to bring the passengers to a compromise with one another. I would be sure to listen to both with an empathetic ear and then hopefully suggest a few possible solutions. Maybe the passenger who has reclined their seat would be willing to sit upright until the other has finished their meal or would be willing to only recline halfway.
15) If your cabin manager gave you an order that violates airline protocol, what would you do?
This one is tricky. You cannot violate protocol though, ever so that has to be the main part of your answer.
If you work for an airline where the cabin managers have to have additional training and some seniority, you might want to emphasize that you respect their role, but you would follow protocol anyway.
✅ Possible Answer:
Well, this is tricky because obviously I respect their position, but I would stand up and insist I do things by the book. Of course, I would do so as respectfully as possible, saying something like:
“I’m sure your request is based on your experience of what has worked for you in the past, but I am not comfortable violating protocol and will accomplish this goal according to my training.”
16) If you had a passenger who was struggling to stay calm because they were overcome with flight anxiety, how would you calm them down?
To respond to this scenario just emphasize how you would be a good listener and an empathetic presence for the person with flight anxiety.
✅ Possible Answer:
I would start by asking that person if I could do anything specific to help them feel safer and offer them comfort as best I can. I read somewhere that someone with flight anxiety found it helpful to watch the crew. So I might suggest something like that.
Behavioral Questions
In this section, I am going to give seven examples of behavioral questions. These questions are a bit different from the situational ones because they ask for examples of how you have behaved in the past, instead of how you might behave in the future.
17) Give me an example of when you delivered excellent customer service
You just need to give an example.
If you haven’t ever been in a position to provide customer service in a professional setting, try to think of a similar situation.
✅ Possible Answer:
I have never really had a job in the service industry before, but I suppose a similar example would be when I used to volunteer at a local museum, and I would help visitors by answering their questions and pointing them in the right direction. Once a mom came to me in a panic because she lost her son in the dinosaur exhibit. I calmed her down and then helped her look for him. We found him quickly. I think this is an example of good customer service because I had to help her in a moment of stress and provide both tangible help as well as some emotional support.
18) Think about a difficult co-worker or boss, how did you handle them?
Be honest but empathetic when answering this question.
If you are young and coming to this interview straight out of school, you could also talk about a teacher or classmate you didn’t vibe with.
✅ Possible Answer:
When I was working night shifts as a dispatcher for my college’s shuttle service, I had a driver that I worked with occasionally that could not remember instructions for their life. It always added a little extra stress to my workload because I would have to balance incoming calls with keeping in touch with them to make sure they didn’t forget where they were supposed to be going and who they were supposed to be picking up. It would have been easy to get annoyed and snap at them, but I always took deep breaths and just reminded myself that not everyone has the best working memories, so I developed a system where I would simply radio them between calls and check that they were still on track.
19) Tell me about a time when you demonstrated leadership skills
Come up with an example, it doesn’t need to be a big or heroic moment, something routine and everyday will also work.
Again if you don’t have much professional experience, you can emphasize something from school, maybe a time you took charge of a sports team, or when you organized a study group.
✅ Possible Answer:
I’m still young so I haven’t had many opportunities to take on leadership roles at work, but when I was in college, I was elected president of my dance-theatre club. In this role, I worked as a liaison between the other student members and the faculty of the dance department who supported our performances. My favorite activity was putting together a presentation about the different guest choreographers we could invite to work with us and conducting a voting system so we could democratically decide what type of artist we wanted to work with for the semester. I learned that leadership is really about listening to people and helping foster great relationships among a larger group of people.
20) Tell me about a difficult challenge you faced. How did you solve it?
Again, to answer this question you just have to think of a simple, honest example.
✅ Possible Answer:
The most challenging thing I have ever done is navigate the German visa system as a study abroad student. It is a confusing and highly bureaucratic system that leaves little room for error. As an American, I was unable to apply for a visa ahead of time, so I had to wait until I was in the country to apply. This was scary because once you are there you only have a few months to get your ducks in a row. To make sure I got everything right I had to be really patient and diligent when it came to filling out my paperwork and keeping track of appointments. This experience taught me the value of being detail-oriented and persistent.
21) Describe your biggest on-the-job failure. How did you make things right?
This one can be hard to answer because you have to strike the balance of picking a serious-enough failure without accidentally picking one that might disqualify you.
The best thing to do is try to think of a time you made an honest, unintentional mistake.
✅ Possible Answer:
I think my biggest on-the-job failure was the time I was put in charge of maintaining the Excel timesheet my colleagues and I used to track our hours and overtime. When I tried to copy the sheet from January to create a new sheet for July, I accidentally overwrote the previous month’s sheet and the program autosaved before I noticed my mistake. Our hours for the whole year were instantly screwed up! For some people, it looked like they were behind almost a hundred hours for the year, which could have seriously impacted their vacation for the holidays. It took me hours to fix the mistake, and it was humbling because I had to admit my failure to every single one of my coworkers so I could get them to send me backup copies of the timesheet and input their data all over again. But I fixed the timesheet, and all was fine, I just wanted to die of embarrassment a little.
22) Talk about a time when you had to adapt to new information in a situation. What was the situation and how did you ensure a good outcome?
It would be ideal to pick an example where the new information meant you also had to respond to a serious situation with a cool head.
✅ Possible Answer:
Back when I was an AmeriCorps volunteer right after college when I was dispatched to help set up a shelter meant to receive people impacted by a forecasted hurricane. We were nearly finished with our preparations when we received word that the storm had shifted course and we needed to relocate the shelter twenty miles to the west. It was a crazy time, but my teammates and I simply needed to be flexible and work quickly so we could adapt to the changing situation and set up our shelter in a safe area.
23) Talk about a time when you had to adhere to a policy or specific procedures.
Most of us will have an example if we have worked professionally in some capacity.
If you are fresh out of school it may be harder to come up with an example, but you can draw upon school policies or assignments you had to complete for examples.
The idea is to state the policy, and why you understood it to be important.
✅ Possible Answer:
Since I’m pretty fresh out of school I cannot really think of any professional examples, but I did have to adhere to a pretty strict dress code policy at my school. We had uniforms and we needed to keep our items clean and well-pressed for school and were not allowed to wear certain types of accessories. I didn’t always love this policy because I wanted to express myself, but I understood why it was necessary. Having uniforms vastly decreased bullying because we all wore the same things and it prevented us from being distracted from our studies by little things like not having cool shoes.
Knowledge Questions
These questions are designed to check you did your due diligence before applying to become a flight attendant.
Here are three examples.
24) What do you think our airline could do differently or better?
Find an example that isn’t too serious or critical.
✅ Possible Answer:
This is way above my pay grade, but if I had to make a suggestion, I would say that I think the safety video could be redone to better capture passenger’s attention. The video is lovely the way it is, but I have also seen really creative ones before, and I think it would be cool if this airline made one like that to really grab people’s attention when it really matters.
25) What do you think the most important responsibility of a flight attendant is?
Ensuring the safety of the passengers is the number one responsibility of flight attendants.
Customer service comes second.
✅ Possible Answer:
I am a firm believer of the motto “safety first.” I know a big part of this job is customer service, and many passengers will only see us for this capacity, but the most important responsibility of a flight attendant is to ensure the passengers are safe!
26) Why do you think teamwork is necessary for this job?
It is necessary.
✅ Possible Answer:
On an airplane, the passengers outnumber the crew, so I believe it is extremely important we all work together to meet the needs of our customers and keep them safe. There’s no way we could accomplish everything that needs to be done for the in-flight service if we don’t work together.
Resume Style Questions
These questions are questions that inquire about your job history, aspirations, motivations, and dreams. Here are four examples.
27) Where do you see yourself in five years?
This is a good one to answer generally.
What are your professional and personal goals for the next five years.
✅ Possible Answer:
Well ideally, five years from now I would like to be settled into a job that satisfies me and keeps me active and engaged, have an adorable little apartment with a pet fish, and a hobby to enjoy during my time off, I would like to think maybe I will have become a master at indoor rock climbing by then.
28) What did you like least about your last job?
Think of a nice example that emphasizes the fact that you share the same values as the airline you are applying for or would be a good fit for their company culture.
End your answer by stating how you expect to find something to like at the new company.
✅ Possible Answer:
I really enjoyed my coworkers. We had a great working relationship and even did a few things outside work together, like grabbing dinner or going on a weekend hike. I can imagine I will find many amazing coworkers at the airline, and I really look forward to the opportunity to work with so many different people. I love the diversity this company has to offer.
29) What motivates you?
Give an honest answer.
✅ Possible Answer to “What motivates you?”:
I am motivated by my desire to have a fulfilling life. This gives me the desire to work hard, and look for opportunities that are engaging, meaningful, and human-oriented. This is why I’m highly motivated to work for an airline.
30) What is your dream job?
Be lighthearted, you can say it’s becoming a flight attendant but then follow it up with a few general characteristics that you look for in a dream job.
✅ Possible Answer to “What is your dream job?”:
To be fair I’m applying for my dream job right now. I would love to be a flight attendant! But that is because I can see myself working in any job that gives me the chance to come to work each day and face something completely new, a job that allows me to be helpful, and meet new people all the time. A job like this would hardly feel like work because it’s the kind of thing I thrive on.
Conclusion
I hope this interview study guide has helped you prepare for your upcoming flight attendant interview.
I will leave you with one last piece of advice. The most important key to success at a flight attendant interview is to be yourself and answer the questions in an honest, relatable, personable way.
If you can do this you will be taking flight in no time at all!
