What to Bring to an Airline Interview: The Document and Logbook Checklist for Each Major

Pilots have lost interview days over paperwork. Not over answers — over a missing transcript, an untabbed logbook, a form that needed a notary and didn't get one. Delta's own process materials warn that interviewees have been rescheduled over missing documents, transcripts included, and Southwest publishes a bring-list precise enough to specify which logbook pages get tabs.

The good news: this is the most mechanical part of the entire hiring process. There is no judgment call in a document folder. This page assembles, carrier by carrier, exactly what the documented standards require — so the folder is built weeks before the invitation, not the night after it.

The universal core (every carrier, every interview)

Whatever the invitation says, these travel with you:

Original logbooks, complete, from zero time — not a highlight selection. Electronic logbooks travel as a full printout plus the source documents behind them; American's guidance is explicit that printouts accompany original paper logbooks or official military records, and a worn paper book is brought as-is — never hand-recreated.
Certificates and permits: ATP certificate, FCC Restricted Radiotelephone Operator Permit, passport.
Medical certificate — current, with any Special Issuance/SODA paperwork where applicable.
A cover page and table of contents for the logbook set. American's review team recommends it; it costs twenty minutes and makes every other item on this page faster to check.
Your discrepancy log, closed or documented — the logbook audit output. If a reviewer finds a gap, the goal is that you found it first, in writing.

Southwest: the tabbing standard (OFFICIAL — Interview Preparation Guide, Sep 2025)

Southwest conducts a complete logbook review, by a Southwest pilot, inside the interview — and publishes the most specific presentation standard in the industry. Logbooks neat and chronological, pages tabbed for:

250 / 500 / 750 / 1,000-hour fixed-wing turbine milestones
Your most recent turbine flight
All checkrides and type ratings — passed and failed, from initial training to present (sim checkrides tabbed where they would have occurred)
All endorsement pages

Also required: your originals (ATP, FCC permit, medical — the medical may have lapsed to second-class privileges for the interview itself but must be renewed to first class before class), plus a completed Logbook Interview Form. Military pilots: the USAF Automated Flight History Report may substitute, with your flight evaluation folder (AF Form 942 / Forms 8 / NATOPS jacket or equivalent) alongside.

Then the part nobody warns you about — the post-offer packet, issued through Workday with deadlines: FAA Form 8060.13 (National Driver Record Request), fully completed and notarized — uploaded, not mailed; FAA Form 40.25 drug & alcohol release, Part I completed and signed, Part II blank, one per employer from the last two years, including non-flying employers; and a grant of access to your Pilot Records Database (PRD) records. Two years of employers, a notary, and a records grant — none of it hard, all of it slow if you start it the day the offer lands.

Delta: transcripts or reschedule (OFFICIAL — Pilot Careers Process & FAQs)

Delta's published process requires interviewees to bring documentation of all flight hours, certificates, medical, and college transcripts — and states that missing documents can force a reschedule. The transcript is the trap: pilots who haven't touched their university records in a decade discover registrar timelines at the worst possible moment. Order transcripts when you apply, not when you're invited. One more Delta-specific item with a long fuse: a Yellow Fever International Certificate of Vaccination is required before indoctrination (narrow medical waivers only) — United lists the same document among its requirements, so it belongs in the universal folder if either carrier is on your board.

United and American: review is real, lists are thinner

United publishes no post-offer packet specifics in the sources we verified, and this page will not invent one. What current candidate reports consistently describe (SECONDARY, August–September 2026) is logbooks collected and reviewed at the in-person Denver interview — arrive with the universal core assembled to the Southwest tabbing standard and you are covered for the documented parts of any carrier's day.

American's standard is the audit standard: its review team's guidance (SECONDARY reporting of the team's February 2026 briefing) is the strictest documented — originals over recreations, every page signed, cover page recommended — and American is moving its logbook review to before the interview during 2026, which converts this whole page from interview prep into application prep. If your complete airman file is part of your record story, order it early: the FAA file (Form AC 8060-68) takes at least eight weeks.

Build the folder before you need it

The pattern across all four carriers is the same: nothing on these lists is difficult, and almost everything on them has a lead time — registrars, notaries, FAA files, vaccination records, two years of employer forms. Interview invitations arrive on the airline's schedule, and the hiring windows that produce them do not care about your paperwork timeline.

This assembly — per-carrier checklists, the tabbing map, the post-offer packet tracker — is File 06 of the Major Ready Prep Pack, sitting on top of the audit protocol and the counting engine so the documents in the folder agree with the application that earned the interview. Run the free Application Readiness Checklist first: it audits whether the folder exists yet, alongside your logbooks, records, and application data, against the standard of being submittable in two hours. The Prep Pack ($79) is the full system when the checklist finds the gaps it usually finds.

An interview should test whether they want to fly with you. Don't let it test whether you could find a transcript.

Facts verified October 15, 2026. Bring-lists change — the invitation letter and the carrier's current official guide control over any summary, including this one. Sources are labeled OFFICIAL (airline/FAA) or SECONDARY (industry reporting and candidate reports) in the text; where they conflict, the official source governs. United post-offer specifics are deliberately omitted: none were published in the verified sources.