Ground Staff Career Guide: Roles, Salary 2025 & Future Scope

A. In India, ground staff salaries usually rise with job experience, experience-based skills, and promotions, resulting in better pay and benefits. A fresher typically starts with pay of INR 15,000–INR 25,000 a month, which they often raise to INR 40,000–INR 50,000 or more after years of experience.

Ground staff employ increased roles and responsibilities, collaborative internal training, and performance-based work ethic and recognition results into monetary rewards and benefits. Ground staff can also become supervisory or managerial employees earning INR 6 to INR 10 LPA with leading airlines.

A. Ground staff do get holidays, but holidays are often a movement shift and are a rotating leave schedule versus a bank of weekends or public holidays.

Leave is typically based on operational needs, with compensatory offs for work leave on public holidays. 

Most airlines or airport authority have some policy in place for annual paid leave, casual leave, and sick leave.

A. Ground staff will generally work eight to ten hours a shift, depending on job responsibilities or airport traffic.

A. Ground staff and cabin crew both have their benefits, and which job is better depends on someone's personal values and career choices. 

Ground staff have less travel, regular, land-based jobs, stable shift patterns, and a fixed workday. Cabin crew have travel benefits and higher starting salaries, and values travel, but need to report early and usually maintain unpredictable schedules. Cabin crew work is also physically demanding in terms of onshore preparations, boarding and in-flight responsibilities, tracking variables, direction to safety managers and cabin preparation and cleaning. 

A. Ground staff work is a support role like checking customers in and boarding customers on the flight, handling bags securely, providing customer support as required, updating flight information in real-time, handling delays and cancellations, and performing safety compliance checks. 

Ground staff also perform roles behind the scenes on their teams which will be involved with operational/ safety processes or those of administrative performance at the airport. 

A. While ground service roles can be rewarding, they also have physical requirements and unpredictable schedules due to the work environment. The busyness of the airport is an emotional and operational challenge.  

• Long & Irregular Shifts – Ground personnel can work early mornings, late nights, weekends, and holidays because the airport operates 24/7.   
• High Pressure & Stress – Ground personnel deal with passenger questions, late and delayed flights, and emergencies, which can take a mental and emotional toll.   
• Physically Demanding Work – Some positions (baggage/ramper positions) can require a long time of either standing or lifting items.   
• Weather & Safety Risks – Staff are usually required to work outdoors while exposed to changing weather patterns. Safety protocols must be strictly followed.

A. While there are job security and travel benefits, ground staff positions may have work-life balance and career development challenges. 

• Slow Advancement – Career advancements in ground staff roles can take longer for career advancement (e.g., compared to technical or cabin crew roles), unless you become a specialist or retrain.
• Repetitive Work - Repetitive work can become boring, particularly in customer-facing roles. 
• Lower Entry-Level Pay Check – Entry-level pay for ground staff is likely to be lower than pay evident in cabin crew or aviation engineer roles.
• High workloads associated with peak work periods - Busy times of the year in travel (such as festivals and holiday periods) can produce extreme passenger flow and increase work pressures.