baggage handler

passenger service agent

agent

cargo agent

customer service representative

Swissport

As someone who worked in the aviation industry, I always worked behind a desk.
As soon as this opportunity came up to work at the Airport, without hesitation I left for this one.  I was so excited for what was to come while working at the airport, for the first few weeks I was very eager and excited so I took on all the challenges that were thrown at me to show my superiors how I am capable of handling things in hopes of one day moving up in the company.

I worked for the Air France-KLM account

After month two and onwards things started getting real ugly and fast: agents that get promoted to team leaders suddenly forget that they were once where you are and power trip while completely disrespecting you.
Let's say you were to finish work at 5:15, you can't just leave and punch out, you had to go to your superior (AND WAIT) to see if you can leave, it can be up to 15-20 minutes of waiting or they simply force you to stay since they are always short staffed and will threaten to put in a "refusal of work" if you don't accept to stay.

Forget about having days off, we usually bid for our schedules the next month and if you are lucky and high enough in seniority you will eventually get weekends off, due to the complete arrogance and lack of knowledge from the scheduling crew, they will change your schedule about 18 times within 2-3 weeks so you can't even count on making any plans as such, I ended up with 1 day off a week.

Our contract was set for part-time, not "6 days a week, plus late night calls from scheduling to come in early the next day with no guarantee with what time you finish"

Not to mention that no benefits are included at all.

So do yourselves the favor and save yourself the exhausting stress and don't bother applying for this company, I have seen many good people leave burnt out and discouraged.

I loved the aviation industry until I started working here, not I want nothing to have to do with it.

Initially I had thought I that I landed a great job and am set for a good amount of time. Yes, the job was secure as it was unionized but as for great job? I think otherwise. Although I did learn a lot during my time with the company, and I did make a few great friends whom I’ll miss working with, the company itself definitely isn’t the best and they definitely do not pay their employees what they’re worth. At the same time, some of the people they hire are quite questionable as well.

Management was lacking in all aspects. If you wanted to move up within the company, you basically had to be friends with the right people. For them, it’s favouritsm over capability. It is also a seniority based company, however don’t be surprised if someone of lower seniority gets things in their favour - again, favouritsm at it’s finest. They will find all sorts of ways to bypass rules in their favour and do not take into account things that need to be addressed. Rather, the only issues that do get addressed are only acknowledged if it is in their favour. 

Pay is a joke, you might as well work for McDonald’s and get paid the same amount (with less stress on you with how hard they expect you to work at times). Don’t get me wrong, there are moments where there is a lot of downtime (ie waiting for flights to arrive, delays, etc.) however the shifts are usually 4-6 hours max and in order to get 40hrs a week you’d have to do a lot of split shifts. Benefits are great though (but no flight benefits for passenger service agents).

It’s very easy to get stuck with the company because of the security and how easy it can be sometimes. If you’re looking to have a bright and fruitful future however, this is definitely not the company to stay with. I will say that it is a great stepping stone to get into other companies within the airport, but there are many other entry level companies with higher pay that are good as well.

Althought I did enjoy the job itself and people that I worked with, management was the worst. They would often play favorites and the people that actually worked hard and knew what they were doing, management would criticize constantly or find very minor things to pick on simply because your not in there favorites list (let's just say if you were dating management or were really good buddies simply because they spoke the same language, they'd bump your position up to a supervisor without the proper training and in turn the new supervisors wouldnt be reprimanded for a mistakes they would constantly make or they would hide in the office alot of the times when we needed help the most). We were constantly short people which meant management would over work us sometimes even without the proper training  and we were underpaid for it. Often times a person would end up doing a job that's meant for a couple people that they would have to do by themselves and would have passengers complain sometimes because the service was slow or not up to standards because of 1 or 2 agents doing all the work. Union didn't help and if you had a complaint about something or someone they wouldn't do a thing about it they'd tell you to your face not to worry things will be dealt with but in the end it wouldn't change its still the same.  The schedule was always all over the place and management was disorganized for the most part. Payroll would constantly our pay wrong either they would forget to put in your over time or missed a whole 4 hour shift in the pay. Everytime we'd get paid we would always have to carefully calculate our hours and fix the pay discrepancy, it was quite a nuisance. 

A typical day at work for me was, dealing with diverse passengers. In general.

I have learned that every passenger has different scenarios and listening attentively makes once life easy and the passenger experience smooth.

In my opinion, when the management is out of rich to the general employee, not visible and reachable that is a problem.  In my experience, there was a lot of errors in the payroll department.  It was so frustrating at times to follow with your paystub all the time.  

The culture needs some face lifting to do, I experienced different pool of airlines and I learned different cultures have different values, yet the management and also supervisors could have implemented the smooth harmonized communication amongst employees from diverse cultures and backgrounds.

The hardest part of the job was finding equipment to do your duty of the day.  For instance literally, you have to fight amongst different pools of airlines agents to get the Golf Carts and Wheelchairs etc.   


I enjoyed a great deal of learning different basic languages, hearing different human beings stories and learned from them. In some cases, the pool you work for can give you a chance to communicate directly with actual airline representatives and develop your skills of communication and also create a great network for future career choice one might have.

I worked at swissport for 3 months, I worked at many other companies in the past at the airport. 
Swissport has the most useless management ever. I use to show up to work and be getting bounced around between multiple flights. There is an extremely high turnover rate, benefits after 1 year and their equipment was horribly maintained. They definitely break many different labor rules on a daily basis, this company needs a government audit. I have done wide body flights entirely on my own, imagine loading 700 bags into containers to be loaded onto aircrafts (these bags weigh anywhere between 10-70 pounds.  Your hard work doesn't mean a thing, they only care if the flight goes out on-time. I'd say only work here if you REALLY can't find another job. Your back will go very quick working here. The airlines they service have extremely heavy bags/cargo. The hardest part of the job is definitely the heavy lifting, working in all kinds of weather conditions and working with other workers. The most enjoyable part of this job is the aircraft, swissport services many wide bodied aircraft that I absolutely loved working on. The boeing 787 was my favorite aircraft to work on. You will start off in the bag room for at least 6 months before moving to the ramp, unless you have previous experience.

I made a huge mistake to accept working for that company. I've worked there for a year and a half and had to resign even if I loved all the fantastic people I met there.... Terrible management, no respect towards the employees- they abuse people for the minimum salary and they don't give their employees any benefits. If you are new you will be constantly added hours without your knowledge and work 6 days a week. The job is very stressful, you have angry passengers yelling at you all the time and supervisors blaming you for stuffs you're not responsible for. The only thing that counts for them is their money and nobody will even ask you how are you feeling there. Thank god I found myself a better job where I have all the benefits I should have working in the airline industry. Yes you do get customer service experience, yes you do meet nice colleagues with whom you can complain about the working conditions all the time but trust me it is a huge waste of time. It's hard to believe how such a silly company can even exist on a job market in a country like ours where you get your ''insurance plan'' only after 2 years of employment and the people who work directly for an airline-NOT FOR A CONTRACTOR get their insurance plan after only 6 months of employment IT'S A SHAME!!! I just wish ALL THE BEST to the people that are still stuck there and I hope they are all going to find something better than that and I CERTAINLY DO NOT WISH ANYBODY TO GO WORK THERE.

These guys are a joke. Seniority takes top priority in more ways than just Scheduling. If you are on the bottom, you do ALL of the work. It takes 5 guys to efficiently Load and Unload a flight. If there are 12 flights in the time of your shift, and there are 30 guys working, the SAME FIVE GUYS are loading and unloading for 9 of them. There is no rotation. Everyone else goes to get coffee, and you get screamed at by Management and called insubordinate if you speak out against it. There are only 2 options for shifts, 20 hours a week, or 50+, no middle ground. They will work you like a dog and refuse to fix you up if you get hurt.

There is also a lot of Pot and Cigarette Smoking on the Tarmac, but Management does everything they can to hide it so they don't get fined or fired. 

Their grievance process is an even bigger joke. If you have problems with co-workers, and you ask The Union for Paperwork to file against the person, you will go a month of being told "I'll have it for you tomorrow when you come in", and you still will not get it. 

Coworkers are all angry and bitter either because they have older guys teaching them they should be, or because they are so fed up from the disgusting work environment. You can't quit, though, they'll manipulate into thinking it's a bad idea to leave, and that you're an "Important part of the team" which is the biggest joke. This is the main reason, when Swissport was Servisair, that people called it "Circusair"

I wanna preface this by saying I worked from the bottom to middle management over 10 or so years at Swissport. I saw just about everything someone can see on the local level. 

PERSONALLY, I enjoyed working there for the most part. But there’s no escaping how tough it is. It’s physically gruelling working in baggage handling. You’re subject to the weather. Flights often seem relentless (pre covid) and you almost never had enough guys to get things done the way they should. That said, experience and team work always got you through anyway. 

Turnover is really high because it’s a low skill low pay job that is very demanding. 

While you’re working 24/7, nights, weekends, every holiday under the sun...the office employees are unavailable for the majority of the week as they only work 9-5 on business days. THATs a bit demoralizing. When you’re told to come in on your off time to resolve a pay dispute, or pick up a uniform or any number of things, it can get really frustrating. 

I learned a ton working there. I’d still be there now if a similar position at a slower paced company hadn’t come up. I left ultimately because people got hired above me that weren’t needed, I didn’t like the way we just stuffed the payroll with more and more “managers”. We needed to create a better environment for the boots on the ground employees, not another manager for the supervisors. 

My day of work every day is different from arrival put bridge to the aircraft watching the ramp agent bring the container to the baggage room arrival hall or helping passenger looking the baggage on the belt every day is always something different example passenger always will like to complain small tiny thing even on arrival and as for departure my duty usually control the line or check in passenger but the most challenge thing to check in is document check becsuse if you dont check the right information and passenger with out the visa the company or the airline end up have to pay the find and what had I learn the most challenge thing in my 10 years I would say speaking to customer because there will be different kind of way you speak to regular passenger and senior passenger or economy class passenger and business class passenger is the voice of way you speak to them
At my workplace I meet all different kind of passengers or employee some of them can be very nice some can be very rude but I learn one thing if you nice to people people will nice back to you
The hardest part at my work place is to deal with crazy customer but most of cases end up can solve the problem because from my long term customer servise experience
The most enjoyable thing is  to see all kind of customer meet different employee and see all different aircraft at work

Once you punch in, you look at your shift's schedule.  

Some days you get a well spread out day with a nice break for lunch, and others you get pounded with flights.  Management don't care whether or not you've just finished 3 consecutive flights, they'll add another flight into your schedule if they deem that you "have enough" time to do it.  At times a supervisor may pick you up after you finish a flight and take you straight to another one, no matter the weather. 

Vehicles are a coin toss whether they work well or at all.   You're lucky to even find some when it gets busy, and if not, you wait outside for the transporter to take you to your gate.  

Coworkers are nice, fun to talk to.  A lot of them are willing to work hard, whereas some tend to leave the heavy lifting to the new workers and minimum work.  

"Picking" your schedule isn't what it sounds like.  They give you a list of generated schedules, many of which have drastically different start times that seems inconvenient for most people.  Although trading shifts could help if you're stuck with a inconvenient schedule due to low seniority

Hardest part of the job is watching supervisors sit in their vehicles while they watch you, and then rush you to avoid delays.

Top Job Titles	Average salary
Baggage handler 12 salaries reported	$21.22 per hour
Passenger service agent 19 salaries reported	$19.09 per hour
Agent 10 salaries reported	$21.35 per hour
Cargo agent 8 salaries reported	$20.57 per hour
Customer service representative 10 salaries reported	$18.25 per hour

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