Passing The City Codes Test (For Airliner Employment)

Professor Snugglesworth

In my ongoing quest to find employment, I am currently trying to get hired by a certain airliner for the position of Home Based Representative. While the salary isn't the greatest, there are immediate perks to a work-at-home job (the biggest being not having to put up with the terrible, terrible FL traffic), as well as several employee perks that may come in handy down the line (traveling passes).

I recently received an e-mail that I passed Stage 2 of the interview process (the phone interview), so now it's on to Stage 3, the City Code test. Essentially, it looks like I have to memorize all the different abbreviations used by the company. At first it sounded simple enough, just take the first three letters of each city, like so:

Anchorage: ANC
Fairbanks: FAI
Miami: MIA

But there are also plenty of abbreviations that don't seem to follow any sort of consistency:

Quincy: UIN
Waterloo: ALO
Orlando: MCO (the hell?)

Perhaps it's not as bad as it initially looks, and I do have until the 18th to memorize this stuff, but I was hoping that anyone who has taken this test might be able to offer some pointers.

How will the test be presented? Will it be multiple choice, fill in the blanks, a little of everything? What's the required score to pass the test? Is there a pattern to the abbreviations I'm not seeing?

Any and all advice would be helpful.

DaMoonRulz

Sometimes the name of the airport is deceiving. The 'Cincinatti' airport code is CVG which is weird until you find out the airport is ACTUALLY in Covington. Which airline? If it's Delta or united I can ask my brother about it.

ceres

Sometimes no, there is no pattern, just history. Newark (EWR) is an example of that, and all you can do is know that Newark is EWR.

I hate to just say 'google is your friend,' but you would really, really be much better off doing some independent research about the test outside of these forums. You have this tendency to ask questions here that could much more easily and efficiently be answered by reading the organization's website or (as in this case) calling the company administering the test and asking where you can find some basic information about it. They probably won't have a problem telling you things like testing format, but that should be your first step rather than asking here if a very specific test is multiple-choice.

Professor Snugglesworth

You're not wrong, and I do plan to do my own research, but I wanted to make this thread in addition to my own self query in case there's anyone here with a similar job that they can give me any personal tips or advice. That also includes any follow-up questions I may have, such as what kind of questions they may ask during the face-to-face interview (which seems to immediately follow the test), that sort of thing.

Edit: Thought I'd share an awesome strategy that @DaMoonRulz PM'd me:

the best way to remember the city codes is flashcards and mnemonics. Mco = Mickey comes to Orlando. Cvg = Cincinnati very good. Fort Myers is RSW Regional SouthWest

Old highschool trick, but still quite effective. That should help immensely. :^:

Aioua

Make sure if you're doing flashcards you do it both ways. Brains are funny things, and even if you memorize "MCO -> Orlando" it doesn't mean you also memorized "Orlando -> MCO".

Professor Snugglesworth

Took the test today and passed. I was a nervous wreck since the test turned out to be only 50 questions. The margin for error was incredibly low with the max amount of wrong answers being 13, but I managed with only 7 wrong.

The whole test was fill in the blank, with the first half requiring you to put down the three letter codes, the second half putting down the city (state not required) for the codes listed.

The face-to-face interview followed immediately after, with only two or three people having failed the test. Needless to say I was totally relaxed after the test, so I believe I nailed the interview. They said I should expect an answer for the next phase (training, which is basically "you're hired") by next week.

DaMoonRulz

Nice. Do you remember which ones you missed?

zepherin

Good luck, and if you get the position congradulations.

Professor Snugglesworth

DaMoonRulz wrote: »

Nice. Do you remember which ones you missed?

I took a guess on the ones I struggled with, so I'm not entirely sure which ones were correct or not, but I can recall having trouble with:

Ft Meyers: RSW

Chicago O' Hare: ORD

Columbia: COU

Baltimore: BWI

White Plains: HPN

They had multiple version of the test, so it was simply a random selection. Again, very small margin for error with only 50 questions. I would have preferred 100 or something since I studied well over 250 combinations (or better yet, have it be multiple freaking choice).

Hopefully this will pay off. I'll let you guys know once they respond.

DaMoonRulz

Aw come on, I told you RSW :P

vhannroy

I know it is to late but for the future I used Mickey's Corporate Office to remember MCO aka Orlando. In the future, a lot of times the weird codes come from the name of the actual airport like midway in Chicago is MDW... best example I could think of on the spot.

Gaslight

Also chiming in late: for future reference, BWI is pretty straightforward as Baltimore-Washington International is the actual name of the airport.

Professor Snugglesworth

So I finally got a response from American Airlines last week via E-mail.

"Thank you for meeting us for the interview, we appreciate your interest but yadda yadda fuck you".

I really thought I nailed the interview, but I've gotten this far in other jobs before and still face rejection a week or two later. Perhaps I should look into getting advice on future interviews with another thread.

I'm still bummed about this latest rejection, but the upside is my good friend was able to secure me a temporary job at his office (ironically also related to airliners). The work I do is menial stuff, from sorting timecards to scanning them, building shelves and putting more files into the shelves, but it's a really relaxed environment where I can come in at my own time (I've made it an afternoon to late night affair, 5pm to 1am typically), make $10 an hour, and have the time pass by quickly thanks to my iPad serving as a portable idiot box (up to Season 2 on Sons of Anarchy, and also subscribed to Giant Bomb's paid subscription for a year).

The downside is, again, this is temporary, but he's continuing to find me work once this current gig runs dry (which may have happened at the time of this posting, I'll have to wait until tomorrow to know for certain). He feels confident he can get me another part-time job as a cleaner for airplanes at night during maintenance. It sounds like grunt work, and it most likely is, but he claimed it generally only takes 2-3 hours to clean a whole plane, and everyone is paid a fixed $100 for every craft clean. On a good day, he says workers clean five to eight planes a week, and on a slow day three to four. That's a heck of a decent wage for what amounts to a really big car wash.

The most important thing is that thanks to him, I've gotten my work ethic back after years of unemployment, which benefits me in case I get something more stable. Plus I can add these latest employments to my resume, which I hope would make it look more attractive to future potential employers.

So I figured I'd update you on things up to now. I'm still hoping to find an actual stable job with decent wages and benefits. I still think home-based employment is the way to go, at least in my area, so I'll be looking for other companies with similar positions from AA.

noir_blood

Years of unemployment?

If you don't mind me asking, why do you think it's been so long since you had a job?

I recently left a good paying job where I'd been in for almost 7 years to finish my semester of student teaching, and I'm terrified that I'll end up in the same boat as you, unable to find a job afterwards.

Professor Snugglesworth

Bad timing and poor choices, on my part. FL does seem to have one of the lowest job rates right now, and I spent the time unemployed earning my Bachelor's in Criminal Justice, a degree that has done nothing for me other than having me "tentatively selected" for working as a CBP Officer.

My friend really came through to me, even if it is temporary. He also has me listed to clean an airplane next Tuesday. Even though he assured me that the workers won't be cleaning on top of the plane or anything else dangerous, I'm still a bit worried over the physical strain or mixing of chemicals. Either way it's not something I have to commit to, since he says I can try it for the first day and decide from there (and still get paid).

DaMoonRulz

What type of aircraft?

Professor Snugglesworth

The big passenger kind, I guess? I don't have all the details, but he says it takes about 2-3 hours to clean the whole thing, including motors and other parts. I was just glad to know that we don't handle the interior of the ship, meaning no cleaning puke.

grouch993

Too late to help now, but Chicago O'Hare used to be an orchard, so the field was abbreviated to ORD.

DaMoonRulz

Ohhh I thought you meant interior. Worst thing to find is someone's bottle of tobacco spit.

Professor Snugglesworth

Yeah, he said it's the exterior only. No ladders or conveyor belts either, we just use extended poles to reach the top.

On the surface this sounds like a job I'd be embarrassed to admit to having, but at $100 per 2-3 hour shift, with five to eight planes a week on a good run, that's an amount I can't ignore. Especially as a part-time job.

grouch993

I had a high school friend that paid for his VFR flight training by cleaning planes at the local airstrips.

schuss

No job is worth being embarrassed over. Is it paying you? That's all you need.

Aioua

Also cleaning the outside of planes is pretty cool, not embarrassing. Especially when you're making hustlin' money.

vhannroy

Plus you are cleaning the outside of a commercial plane. It is not the same as de-greasing the underside of a 172 or anything like that.

Professor Snugglesworth

Aioua wrote: »

Also cleaning the outside of planes is pretty cool, not embarrassing. Especially when you're making hustlin' money.

If this job turns out as promised, I will hereby refer to all wages collected as hustlin' money.

SammyF

Man, washing airplanes is awesome! Airplanes are neat. When I travel I still sit at the terminal window so I can watch them roll like aluminum winged leviathans across the tarmac.

Considering that and also the personal satisfaction I feel when I've finished washing my car, if you get to combine both and make $100 a shift, that's great.

Also, you don't have to deal with all the panic and rage that tens of thousands of disgruntled and discomfited passengers can bring with them into a busy airport like you would have at the job you tested for, I'd call that a win.

Professor Snugglesworth

It does sound really great, but the only real issue is that the amount you make a week depends entirely how many planes are available for cleaning. As my friend said, on a busy week there's five to eight planes, on a slow week two to four.

That's still a good deal for part-time work, but it's not a steady means of income from the sound of it. It should certainly help maintaining bills, but I'll continue to shoot for something higher.

SammyF

Professor Snugglesworth wrote: »

It does sound really great, but the only real issue is that the amount you make a week depends entirely how many planes are available for cleaning. As my friend said, on a busy week there's five to eight planes, on a slow week two to four.

That's still a good deal for part-time work, but it's not a steady means of income from the sound of it. It should certainly help maintaining bills, but I'll continue to shoot for something higher.

Well, you know, definitely keep looking. But I think there's something really valuable to be said for doing this sort of work when it applies to your resume -- I have a friend right now who with a masters in something or other related to public health, and she keeps throwing out resumes for jobs that are far beyond her experience and expertise on the philosophy that she is too smart for entry-level work, and she only needs to hear "yes" once.

And by all means everyone should push the envelop when applying for jobs because you shouldn't undersell your own potential. But having a part time job like cleaning airplanes on your resume while you're looking for your next job will signal to your next employer that while you want to establish yourself in a respectable career, you're also not afraid of a little hard work. And that's what's going to separate you from people like the friend I just mentioned -- as I keep trying to explain to her as politely as I can, speaking from the perspective of someone who has had to staff up offices in the past, no one wants to hire some asshole who thinks that entry level work is beneath her.

No one's going to be able to accuse you of that ever again, and good on ya.

Professor Snugglesworth

I appreciate the continued support.

Texted my buddy today about whether I start tonight, said he'd get back to me. I don't think it'll happen until tomorrow, though.

But here's another development: the Custom Border Protection job I applied for last year finally got back to me, giving me a mountain of new paperwork to fill out as well as schedule me for the next phase of the pre-employment process next week, which is the Health and Fitness test. Apparently this is just the first phase of the fitness test (how many situps, push-ups, steps, etc you can do in a minute), with the 1.5 mile run reserved for the next phase whenever that is (but I've been continuing to train for it).

So my new hope now is that I can earn a steady cash flow from the airplane cleaning job, then starting work with CBP before the year is over. They've really spaced out these pre-employment phases, so I have no idea if they will continue to be spaced out or if finishing the next step next week will start speeding along my potential employment.

Professor Snugglesworth

I thought I'd update this thread for those who were following it earlier. After several delays, I was finally called in to start cleaning airplanes. The first gig happened two nights ago, the second last night. I have to wait until evening to receive confirmation (via text) if there's an available plane tonight.

The work was pretty much how my friend described it, though with a few personal misconceptions that were soon made clear. The biggest hurdle was actually finding the place.

1. The GPS pointed me to the airport just fine, but it took some over-the-phone directions to locate the place where I'm supposed to park. I feel fairly confident I can get there on my own from now on, but I'm also trying to find out if there's a way to save the exact spot to park on my iPhone through the Maps app.

2. Once I park in the designated spot, I meet up with the other cleaners (counting me, it's a total of four). We get on the boss's car, drive 8 floors up in the parking garage, take an elevator down, a bus, and finally walk to the area to clean the plane.

3. The planes are medium-sized jets, so using a cleaning pole isn't really necessary (especially for a tall guy like me).

4. No hoses are used. Instead we use a lemon-scented spray along with towels (which are then washed in a bucket). We aren't so much washing the plane as we are Windexing it.

5. We aren't responsible for cleaning even half of the plane. We mostly work on the bottom portion, including under the plane (which is the toughest to do, since I'm tall. I need to be careful with my back when I'm under there).

The actual cleaning process is actually much quicker than I imagined. I clocked at 1 hour 30 minutes the first night, 1 hour 10 minutes the next. Of course they told me it varies according to how dirty the planes are, but they said that's usually the average time regardless. Half the time seems focused on just preparing/getting to the plane than the actual cleaning.

Overall, it's not a difficult gig, and certainly worth the $100 per night. The first night I was nervous about getting the job done, plus I had that moment where pride was getting in my head ("I have a Bachelor's Degree, why am I doing this?"). But I improved greatly the second night and I expect I'll have a full handle of things on the third. Also learned to plan accordingly, including goggles (the wind forces the spray to hit you smack in the eyes regardless of where you are).

It's certainly hustlin' money, but not enough to fully satisfy me. I'm going to look into maybe landing another work-at-home daytime job, preferably online like that missed opportunity to earn $700 a month through articles. If I could get something like that under my belt in addition to this airplane gig, then I can hold out until I (hopefully) get hired by the career I'm currently aiming for. This airplane cleaning work also entirely depends if there are planes to clean on the first place: according to one of the cleaners, on an average schedule they get 3-4 planes to clean per week. Still a good amount for the less-than-part time work hours, but I could still use more cash.

Speaking of which, I also completed the next phase of the Custom Border Protection application (the structured interview). I even received a call today that I passed that, and now just have to wait until they contact me for the next phase (drug and polygraph test). I still have no idea how long it'll take until I finally get hired (they said the background investigation process can take up to 14 months), but if I can maintain a steady source of income, I can rest easier.

Curly_Brace

@Professor Snugglesworth I hope this job turns out well for you! Working in the airline/airport industry can be tough, so keep a stiff upper lip and try to enjoy yourself.