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Airlines

The only parachutes on U.S. airlines are golden: Big exit packages at the top

Dennis Schaal

Photo Credit: Thomas Horton, Chairman, President and CEO of American Airlines, attends a ceremony for Boeing's new 787 Dreamliner at Dallas-Fort Worth airport in Fort Worth Texas, Friday, May 11, 2012.  Fort Worth Star-Telegram/MCT / Brandon Wade

Skift Take

It is difficult to stomach giving $20 million to a CEO of an airline in bankruptcy, a company that resisted a merger and has been bleeding losses over the last few years.

The judge handling the AMR Corp. bankruptcy put off a decision yesterday on American Airlines CEO Tom Horton's proposed $20 million exit package, but the big number is fairly typical of the massive golden parachutes that legacy airline CEOs involved in mergers have come to love and expect. For better or worse, United Airlines, which emerged from bankruptcy in 2006 and merged with Continental Airlines in 2010, gave United CEO Glenn Tilton a $16.8 million send-off. His total compensa

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