Sanjay Agarwal, Highest Paid CEO in the Airline Biz

Bangalore:  Air carriers may be flying through rough weathers, but their top executives have got handsome pay hikes, while CEO of crisis-ridden Kingfisher has emerged as the second-highest paid among all his peers at Vijay Mallya-led UB Group.

Among the country's three listed airlines also, Kingfisher CEO Sanjay Agarwal's pay package was the second highest in the last fiscal ended March 31, 2012, as per the remuneration details provided in their annual reports.

"Aggarwal brought in a recipe for disaster in September 2011 by closing down Kingfisher's low-cost operations (Kingfisher Red), the model he successfully ran as CEO of Spicejet before joining KFA," a senior pilot told Mail Today. "Both IndiGo and GoAir are thriving because of their low-cost operations. It is ironical that he got such a hefty hike while the loss of KFA was mounting," he added. Interestingly, Vijay Mallya had then said, "We don't believe in low-cost operations anymore."

Recently, Kingfisher had to announce a temporary lockout due to employee unrest, triggered by non-payment of salaries to the staff. While Agarwal has said that he has also not been paid any salary since April as there were no funds, his remuneration in the fiscal year 2011-12 rose nearly to 4.01 crore, from 2.12 crore in 2010-11.

As per the annual reports, company chairman and promoter Mallya was paid a total amount of about 1.43 crore (mostly in sitting fees) from various Group companies. Mallya had got a commission of 51 crore for guarantees extended for KFA loans in 2010-11 but the payment of such commissions has been withdrawn after directions from the consortium of banks, who had taken strong exception to the arrangement. Mallya received remuneration from two overseas subsidiaries amounting to nearly 63 lakh and 76 lakh during the year 2011-12.