IATA Reviews

Former Employee – worked at IATA

Pros – Better than average pay, good benefits such as health insurance, holidays. Great colleagues.

Cons – No salary increases even to compensate for increasing cost of living or inflation. Outdated system of review. Management by FEAR. Spineless, self serving Senior Management looking only at very short term gains with scant regard for the needs of their Members. Employees treated as slaves. The place is now run by young MBAs and project managers with no knowledge whatsoever of the airline industry. Tremendous pressure on everyone to sell everything from Manuals, consultancy services to training courses at ridiculously high prices. All this to support lavish business lifestyles and outrageously generous packages for the chosen few.

Advice to Senior Management – Get rid of everyone from the HR dept. from Assistant Director and above and do that quickly. Revamp the entire Senior Management:get your own people with industry knowledge and experience. Get rid of MBAs hired from various management consultancies who have zero industry knowledge and bring back the experienced, dedicated veterans who were fired only to make the numbers look good in the short term and to reduce the average age of the employees to 35-36 years. Most importantly, walk the talk: treat employees as real Human Capital not an expendable commodity.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at IATA

Pros – pay, pension. Met some really nice, passionate managers... unfortunatly most have left. a challenging but wonderful industry.

Cons – People are called for meeting then taken by surprised and presented with their redundancy letters, taken back to the door by security... a normal practice for the HR "leaders". No vision, no sense of service or operational excellence, just politics and management by fear by a few, serving their interest first. No respect for the airlines needs , and even less so for the Travel Agent community.

Advice to Senior Management – run a full check to control past practices in terms of millions spent in redundancy packages. Check all financials and outsourcing deals as numbers and search for conflict of interest among the senior team, remotivate the employees by building a vision, a project and enabling them to do their job without fear.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at IATA

Pros – Compensation, pension, benefits, great international exposure;
Met there some very nice people with high professional profile;
Occasion (because you have to) to develop many personal skills and competencies.

Cons – I agree with most of the "cons" reported on this website.
I was especially shocked by how unfairly employees were treated. This created an ambiance of fear and discouragement, and most people were working there on a "surviving" mode before managing to find another position or being fired.
I was also shocked by the firing process itself. Eventhough you show them you accept the laid off decision, the HR people need to make the process painful, even humiliating, pushing great pressure to sign their document, ensuring that you won't sue them.
Personnally, I had been relatively protected from all that for several years, until my direct supervisor and the entire team, save me, were laid off. Then it was a dreadful time with a lunatic manipulative supervisor, for whom I never felt any trust and respect.

Advice to Senior Management – If change should be implemented, and it should, on HC policy, it should come from the CEO himself. Some "vicious" person, who have been benefiting from favoritism for years should be removed in priority.
I hope the Italian era is soon over and that IATA will have a fair and respectful management culture in place. Because, I am also convinced this company could be a good to place to work for somebody who is very interested in gaining a geat international experience.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at IATA

Pros – It's a great industry to work in. IATA gets involved in some very interesting and varied subjects. It has a industry leadership opportunities which are hard to find elsewhere. In my time, compensation and conditions were good, including the quality of the business environment (offices, travel etc). IATA has (had) very good staff and there is plenty of opportunity to learn and develop.

Cons – Executive management manages by fear and threat. If you don't support this, your on the way out. It's a tough place to operate. Staff lives in fear of there jobs. Every last friday of the month could be your last one. Leadership development has lofty objectives and IATA does make the investment. Too bad that those that succeed tend to move on and those that fail get moved on. Why bother?

Advice to Senior Management – Embrace the arrival of a new boss as a new era. Remove the fear culture (and those that promote it). Go back to basic business: develop your team, take some risk, be leaders and above all, be fair.

Current Employee – been working at IATA

Pros – IATA is an international trade association with a tremendous exposure to the full air transport industry. New hires not only have an international exposure but can rapidly be exposed to senior management given the size of the organisation.

Cons – The organisation is a disaster, lots of bureaucracy and has been running unefficiently with poor project management skills for quite some time. The implementation of an ERP system has tremendously increased the level of bureaucracy since there is no empowerment. Endless bottle necks to approve meaningless purchase orders and lots of frustration among staff generally and finance more specifically due to a failed attempt to implement what could have been a simple straight forward project.

Advice to Senior Management – Where to start from:
Empower your employees
Encourage more management by objective rather than management by fear
Stimulate your employees by setting tangible objectives and clear accountabilities
Create a real Project Management Office
Loosen your financial procedures
Remove bureaucratic procedures for meaningless purchases

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at IATA

Pros – IATA carries a great brand name, and is representing 95% of the carriers worldwide.
IATA is present in 130 locations worldwide.

Cons – It is an egocentric company, driven by incompetent lunatics, only thinking about themselves and their little empire.
In addition, the management is control-freak and most of the staffs is working under threat.

If you keep quiet and do not try to think outside of the box and suck up your boss - you should be doing well.

With IATA it is not important to win - just do not make waves.

Advice to Senior Management – Tony Tyler is taking over from Giovanni Bisignani. It is a good move as finally IATA is not getting a CEO coming from a bankrupt airline.
Tony get rid off the old guard in Montreal and Geneva, and identify competent managers with real leadership and team spirit.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at IATA

Pros – IATA has a fantastic reputation to people outside the company, they see a solid reputation of good standing with a long history. Putting this on your cv goes a long way, it's like having worked for Apple, Google or Microsoft in the IT industry. The benefits are good and when you enter the company the salary is very decent.

Cons – The earlier postings describe it all, but I would sum it all up in a lack of two things; vision and humanity.

Let's take vision, ask any manager in the organization where they see their department/product or whatsoever being in five years and they will have no clue what to say. This years budget, quick fixes and quick gains are all that counts. The result is that no decision is ever thought through, long-term investments are never made (not because of current economical times, but the last 10 years I'm talking about) and most things then have to be done manually, after all why automate if you can force people to do overtime and fire them if they don't. All this was exemplified perfectly when the new boss at one of the departments said openly he was not interested in long-term issues, simply quick wins to look good and too bad about the consequences.

Humanity, almost every year there is a culling of staff in a preposterous manner. No explanation is given, just get out quickly. This is exactly why management wants expats as they have few rights and they are not interested at all in the consequences to anyone who is fired nor the additional workload to those left behind. One-liner management "do more with less" is the only response given if anyone dares ask just how the same amount of work is to be done sometimes 60% less staff.

Virtually no training at all and certainly no salary raise unless you are an A-player (this is a copy of the old GE-model, GE incidentally stopped working with this system as it proved not to work). The A-player status is at times seen as an urban myth, and when it does happen it has little if anything to do with competency, but more rewarded absolute loyalty to dictatorial management.

Advice to Senior Management – Listen to your staff as you have good people with good ideas. Just one thing, keep the HR department far away when you talk to your employees as nobody will open their mouths when HR is nearby. The HR department should be there to assist, mediate and develop the employees but instead act only as the local execution squad.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at IATA

Pros – - Work with a high-caliber group of international professionals
- Learn about aviation industry and improve your technical skills
- International experience looks great on resume
- Make life long friends
- Generous vacation benefits even for interns

People like to complain about this company but this was probably the best company I have worked for and I have worked at other big companies in the world. You get to meet and work with some of the best individuals in the world who are international and come from top organizations. IATA people make amazing friends and its alumni have great opportunities after working here. Job security is not great but even in other companies there is no such thing as 100% job security.

Cons – - Not many opportunities for growth
- HR or senior management does not care
- Many scandals and vicious people exist within the organization
- People routinely leave and/or get fired
- A clock-in/clock-out system for all employees!
- 40-50hrs is norm a week so be prepared to work hard

Advice to Senior Management – Listen to your employees and reward employees for loyalty. Don't instill fear in them like insisting people wear ties when the DG visits.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at IATA

Pros – -International work experience

-Good vacation (5 weeks) and good benefits

Cons – - Too powerful HR department. HR (or HC, "Human Capital" as they call it) rules IATA.

- Promotions do not take place based on competence but rather based on absolute obedience of those that are promoted. Good people tend to leave when they suddenly need to report to a superior who doesn't have a clue but exercises authority without the necessary work experience.

- A, B, C rating system of employees where only 20% of employees can get rewarded. Good and solid employees who never make it to B+ or A never get a salary raise and no adjustment for cost of living. Many employees have not had a cost of living adjustment over the last 5 to 10 years. Rewards of B+ employees seems arbitrary - some do and some don't get a raise.

- Expatriates do not pay income tax and have a considerably higher paycheck than their peers from Canada (creates inequality and jealousy amongst staff).

- Yearly lay-offs of competent staff for reasons that are unknown to victims and colleagues. Lay-offs are not linked to performance nor to scores in performance appraisals.

- Expats are hired and fired again without respect for the consequences (many have family / children and go back to nothing when they need to leave IATA and Canada shortly after they were hired).

- A non-negligible number of female employees has seen their positions cut during maternity leave.

- Considerable work overload of employees due to regular firings without handover or previous planning. Employees are blamed when they cannot reach the objectives of their own position plus the job of one or several ex-colleagues that were all imposed to them in addition to their own workload. Creates anxiety and panic. Lack of control at all levels because hardly anyone can master the workload of the several job positions that they are responsible for.

- It is obvious that the regular lay-offs and re-training of new staff just to lay off others or the new people right away necessarily costs more than simply coaching existing qualified employees. Why are so many competent people let go at high cost to IATA and the airlines?

- Individuals that get laid off tend to get high level jobs with good salary and benefits afterwards. It is a shame that they need to be let go from IATA to be professionally recognized elsewhere.

- IATA seems to favor young MBAs without experience over employees with airline and/or professional experience. This creates an overly commercial work environment where short-term profits become more important than long-term sustainability. Professional experience is valued less than commercial education. Young, confident, know-it-all? Welcome to IATA! Professional with industry experience and good work attitude? Forget it, you'll get frustrated or laid off.

- Bad work atmosphere. People are unhappy and many employees want to leave, in spite of high salaries.

- Check-in/ check-out system where employees of all salary bands and responsibility levels need to arrive and leave each day at the same time, although many employees work daily with suppliers/ clients/ partners in other time zones, where flexible work hours would help both employer and employee.

- IATA tends to make their employees' life difficult: overly heavy approval procedures for contracts and POs, projects, new products, even vacation! They pretend to be hiring dynamic people that like to overcome obstacles and implement change, but make exactly these people's lives miserable by constantly putting unnecessary obstacles in their way.

Advice to Senior Management – Management is not at the right place. Current management would be good in politics of autocratic countries, the army or any structure where power and absolute authority are an asset. This is certainly not the case for a business management position. Most of the competent management have been laid off due to "non-obedience" or impossibility to reach exorbitant targets year over year.

IATA looks forward to new leadership.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at IATA

Pros – - Good salary, higher than many other companies for a graduate internship
- International company with lot of multicultural teams
- Not bad flexibility when working

Cons – - There is not a lot of chances to grow up or be hired after the internship
- Relations between the employees are sometimes "cold"

Advice to Senior Management – - They should be more "leaders" . It would not be bad actually a change on the seniors management team