Southwest CEO earns record $9.2M

Southwest Airlines CEO and chairman Gary Kelly took in a record $9.2 million in salary, stock awards and other compensation in 2020, a year when the company lost $3.1 billion due to reduced flying during the COVID-19 outbreak.

Kelly and other top executives all saw total compensation increases of 5 percent to 14 percent in 2020, according to regulatory filings. The pay hikes came as the airline’s leaders promised to take pay cuts and stipulations from three rounds of government payroll support limited pay. That’s because most of the payouts were in stock awards issued in January 2020, two months before the COVID-19 pandemic would create the worst financial crisis in aviation industry history.

Southwest was the recipient of more than $6.7 billion in government grants and the airline even threatened at one point to furlough workers if union employees didn’t agree to 10 percent wage cuts. Southwest promised not to furlough any employees after the second round of government stimulus was approved in December and said it won’t make any wage or employee cuts in 2021, even though the company is still losing money.

Kelly’s base pay and the base salary for the company’s four other named executives did drop in 2020.

Kelly’s base fell to $562,500 in 2020, down from $750,000 the prior year.

But he also gained a $300,000 bonus, $7.1 million in stock awards and $1.25 million in other compensation.

He and other leaders of the Dallas-based company agreed to take a 10 percent base pay cut in March and that increased to 20 percent in April. In November, Kelly agreed to forgo his base salary for the remainder of 2020.

Median employee pay at Southwest didn’t fare as well as the executive team.

Compensation for the median employee dropped to $66,269 in 2020, down from more than $101,000 the year before.