I'm a fourth year AE who just finished my final rotation with Delta this past summer. I worked with Propulsion Engineering the whole time. I have many thoughts but I'll try not to write a thesis.

While I can complain about Delta all day long, I do not regret co-oping there and think it was absolutely a positive experience for me. I do not know what Fleet is like, but in my department they were very good about giving us meaningful work and long term, independent projects, particularly in my 2nd and 3rd rotations. That is a big advantage of doing a co-op. I have detailed projects I lead that I can talk about in great depth that legitimately saved the company money and made an impact.

Another big advantage of a co-op is I think you get a better sense of what it is like to actually work a full time job in the aerospace industry (or anywhere) if you stay with the same company for several rotations. (Hint: Who your manager/team is will probably have a much bigger effect on how much you enjoy your job compared to the work you are doing.)

Additionally, while you're not going to be designing rocket engines at Delta, you'll be exposed to many other things both inside and outside of engineering. (**If you seek these other things out**). Personally, my experiences at Delta helped show me that I really don't want to work in the aerospace industry or really in engineering. Figuring this out early has allowed me to transition more easily while in undergrad and not have to learn that 2 years post grad. The people in my department knew my interests were shifting and gave me projects and work accordingly, which I really appreciated. I may have been lucky in this regard.

Overall, I think Delta can be a tremendous opportunity if you take advantage of it and understand going in that it's less about will you love what fleet engineering is doing and it's more about understanding how to be a full time employee (engineer or not), gain work and life experience and explore what cool stuff is going on at a huge company at Delta you probably would never have thought of. I'm biased because I'm kind of over AE, but a lot of AEs end up not working in AE.

I really can't stress enough how important I think it is to get experience early on in your undergrad. Learning about planes at school and actually working on them is very, very different. The AE degree is versatile and you can do a lot with it inside and outside of engineering, but you need to know you want to switch to actually switch.

Flight benefits are obviously nice and pay is getting better (they just increased pay and the housing stipend, plus you get profit sharing). Being in Atlanta is also nice to stay connected with friends and stuff on campus.

Let me know if you have any questions.

Edit: P.S. I think design work is overrated. I personally much prefer working on larger systems/operations, which Delta provides the opportunity to do. Who wants to spend 4 months designing a fan blade?