A contractor wholly owned by the customer: Worst of the worst in aviation!
Pros
- Flight benefits on Delta mainline and connection, and some ID90 offerings. - You get to work around and learn commercial aircraft. - Full time, part time, and ready reserve slots usually available (good for people working multiple jobs). - (Depending on the station) Experience with other airlines beyond DL.
Cons
- The pay is absolutely terrible, usually just a few quarters above minimum wage (again - depends where you are). This doesn't reflect the amount of work an employee will give in return nor the danger they will be placed in on a daily basis. You'll need a second or third job to pay cost of living. - There is no room for growth unless you want to be an overworked, underpaid, under-experienced supervisor or manager. - The health and dental packages offered are singular and absolute crap. They cost about half a paycheck and cover about half of your expenses. - Full time employees do build some vacation hours (I think 1 week per year worked), but they will rip them from you if you move into a "specialty" position because you're "irreplaceable". Part time employees don't get any. - Training is an absolute nightmare. They sit you in front of computer modules for three or four days straight, and pretty much throw you to the wolves after that. If you survive, eventually your "mentor" or "training administrator" will slap an orange vest on you if they think you know what you're doing. Needless to say, lots of mistakes are made. Bad habits teaching and spreading bad habits. - They bait you in with the tease of "flight benefits" and "flexible schedules", but they are often unwilling to work with other job schedules or class schedules. This makes it especially hard on people that don't consider it to be their primary job. - Management is incompetent and mostly corrupt from the ground all the way up to corporate. This stems from the training issue mentioned above. The HR chain will not be very helpful if you have issues. - They place an incredible amount of responsibility and liability on each individual, which only increases as you move higher up. In other words, management will be quick to throw anyone under the bus when an incident happens. - DGS is technically a contractor, but it's a wholly-owned subsidiary of Delta, which causes conflicts at stations that serve more than one airline. - Bare bones staffing, usually one team per every two gates/flights. - They are big on scare tactics (responsibility and liability), especially during audits. - They have a lot of rules and procedures that contradict other procedures or the airline/customer's procedures. Lots of new employees are confused by it.