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These eight requirements represent the kinds of selection requirements generally established by airline companies for their pilot applicants.  An attempt was made to determine if these requirements are critical ones -- that is, do they differentiate between pilots who were eliminated and those who successfully completed their training.

Table 15 shows the results of a comparison of E-group pilots and C-group pilots on the basis of their ages at time of employment.  The difference between the ages of the two groups of pilots is not statistically significant.  In other words, the ages of pilot applicants do not predict their success or failure much greater than expected by chance.

A comparison of the amount of previous education of the eliminated and successful pilots is shown in Table 16.  One point was given for each year of formal education.  It is apparent that within this range the amount of education is not a critical requirement for successful completion of trainings as an airline pilot.

Otis I.Q. scores were available for 63 pilots who were eliminated and 63 pilots who were successful.  Table 17 presents a comparison of these scores.  The difference in mean I.Q. between the two groups is too small to be statistically significant at the 5% level of significance.

Scores on the Bennett Test of Mechanical Comprehension (Form AA) were available for 14 eliminated and 14 successful pilots.  These scores were in the form of percentiles.  The difference between the two groups was very small as shown in  Table 18.  The t-ratio obtained indicates that the differences between the matched pairs are not statistically significant at the 5% level of significance.  It can not be said with confidence that larger groups with a wider range of scores would not show a greater difference, but for the sample tested it can be said that the difference obtained is too small to reject the hypothesis that there is no difference between the two groups.

A few of the pilots in each group had received scores on the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory.  A comparison of the scores of each group on each of eleven parts of the test is presented in Table 19.  It can be seen that on all of the parts of this test the difference between the two groups are not statistically significant at the 5% level.  

The number of previous flying hours was available for 165 eliminated and 171 successful pilots.  Table 20 shows that previous flying hours do not discriminate between the two groups at the level of statistical significance established.  

In order to determine if marital status discriminates between eliminated and successful pilots, the percentages of each group of pilots who were married and single were calculated.  The comparison of the two groups gave a difference which is so small as to be practically insignificant, as shown below:

                     Number Married  Number Single
Eliminated pilots      117 (68.8%)     53 (31.2%)
Control pilots         119 (70.8%)     49 (29.2%)