Google 'targeted selection', it's the process they use in the interview. Your TMAAT questions need to come from your experience, not a 'best answer' you found online. This is all about you and your experiences flying. It’s an easy interview because it’s about you and not the typical ATP test.
Structure your answers, and they tell you this in the packet they send you, in a Situation, Action, Result format. I found every question relating to aviation interviewing that was a TMAAT question and then came up with a twitter like recap of the story. When I first started my stories were long meandering sentences and had no real structure or theme. But when I organized them into a situation, action and result and then reduced them to something I could study and remember, it made the stories easier to recall in the interview. It's hard to do but in the process you end up rehearsing each scenario and making the story more compact and oriented towards what they're looking for. I went one step further and tried to reduce each story down to 2 minutes (and practiced with my wife). It’s not necessary but it really helps your reduce the story down to the point. And when you’re done talking, stop talking!
What are they looking for in the questions? Who knows, that's a behind the scenes part of targeted selection, but they take notes and, if you've read about targeted selection, you'll see that they're scoring each part of your answer based on key words in the situation, action and result part of your story. My father in law used to use targeted selection and he was explaining that the scoring is based on 0-5, with 3, 4 and 5 being passing scores. I gather when they listen to your story they’re listening for key traits, confidence, sound decision making, etc. But the key is to keep it positive and only have a clear reason for telling the story. Some of the scenarios are hard to answer, tell me about a time when you had conflict in the cockpit. 'Oh, he was an as5hole, everybody hated that guy' (that's my John R. story) isn’t going to work.
It’s a low stress environment, I found everyone to be very, very friendly and they really try to put you at ease. And not be corny, but I genuinely liked the interviewers, there were several chief pilots, a line pilot and the HR reps, all great people. The technical stuff is pretty straight forward, MEA, MOCA, Grid Mora, FIR, brief a taxi out at O’hare with a new FO, hot spots etc.
