Highest-Paid U.S. Airline CEOs in 2022
Skift Take
United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby replaced Delta's Ed Bastian as the highest-paid U.S. airline chief in 2022. Here's how much the industry's leading executives took home — as well as how their pay was calculated.
United Airlines’ Scott Kirby traded spots with Delta Air Lines chief Ed Bastian to become the highest-paid U.S. airline CEO in 2022, both in terms of his total pay package and a new methodology for calculating executive salaries. Kirby took the top spot in a year that United turned a full-year net profit of $737 million — its first since 2019.
There’s a twist to how CEO pay was calculated in 2022. A new rule from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) required major, public companies to disclose a figure called “compensation actually paid” for top executives.
Though the new measure with the straightforward name doesn't truly show how much an executive walked away with, it does reflect the changing value of company shares, which typically constitute a large chunk of airline CEOs’ compensation.
Out of all the U.S. airline CEOs, Kirby is the only one who earned more under the new disclosure method.
Based on the traditiona
