The board of American Airlines awarded a hefty raise and slate of incentives to chief executive Gerard Arpey, to bring his compensation in line with top executives at other companies.

The Fort Worth-based airline, which has suffered an exodus of executives in recent years, also is hoping to keep him in the top job over the long term.

According to a report filed Tuesday with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Arpey will receive a base salary of $650,000, up 23 percent from his previous salary of $527,000. The raise was effective Monday.

He will also receive a host of options and long-term incentives, mostly tied to the stock price of AMR Corp., American�s parent
http://www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/news/1512...annel=dfw_news

I'm guessing the general sentiment here will be to complain about the money he's receiving. I think it's a lot, possibly too much, but he has done quite a bit toward returning te airline to profitability..even if we don't like all his moves

Cheers.

I'm a huge critic of exorbitant executive pay in American corporations, but this is almost pitiful.
You won't hear me complaining. This is way, way below market to run a company like AMR. I know a bunch of CEOs who make this kind of money running companies that are nowhere near the size of AA.

I approve the base salary. It's quite a good deal. What's unknown is the rest of the package.

From the base - I agree - it is very low -however the true compensation is the total of all the options and other perks so my guess is it is four or five times higher than the base - still not huge by Fortune 500 CEO pay standards.

I'm however waiting for the day CEO incentive targets are the same as for line employees. In other words, if the CEO gets 50x shares when the stock price hits a given target, give the employees 1x shares at the same target.

AA is certainly not out of the woods yet -- I think that is why they are continuing to talk to employees about productivity increases. I'm not sure if I were Mr. Arpey and I wanted to be at AA in 10 years, I would take this now, but ask the board to defer it for another 24 months.

According to Airline Pilot Central , an AA 777 captain makes $152,832 per year for working just 64 hours per month. Arpey will be making 4.25 times as much per year, while working at least 3x as many hours, for operating a machine (AMR) that doesn't have an "autopilot" mode.

Put another way, Arpey and a triple 7 pilot are making about the same hourly wage.

I would love to hear of any other industry where the CEO makes the same hourly wage as any category of front-line worker. (Excluding the CEOs who are so wealthy that they take $1/year in salary just to make a statement.)

Deleted because I was being mean and crotchety.... and I'm not old enough to be crotchety.

Yes, but.... they won't see it that way.

64 hrs a month is guarantee not necessarily what they actually work, it could be more.

AMR sure does have an "autopilot" mode, it's called the frontline employees doing the work everyday turning around the company to generate profits such as the recent 291 million.

Thats sad, a WN senior captain tops out higher than an AA 777 caotain

Either way, the pilot is making $199/hour and Arpey is making at most $250/hour.

Not necessarily. If AMR stock doesn't go up from its present level, the stock incentives are worth exactly zero.

If you're using a 160 hour month he's making more than 250/hr, not to mention all his other compensation

That only speaks to Arpey's base. That said, the CEO who came into both Enron and Crispy Cream to solve their problems made an extraordinary amount of money while workers continued to suffer.

The only thing one can say is if they have to replace Arpey externally, they would have to probably pay more.

I guess we can also argue that school teachers and firefighters should be paid more - however, in business life isn't fair. I just hope Arpey is sensitive that the only real payoff will be a turnaround that is good for employees, management, shareholders and customers and sometimes it is smarter to wait for rewards that to justify immediate gratification while others are still making sacrifices.

How many olives is that ?

^ ^