Delta issues preview of CEO’s pay package

Delta Air Lines chief executive Richard Anderson received a multi-million dollar pay package last year, even though the company reported an $8.9 billion loss for the year.

Anderson and Ed Bastian, Delta’s president and chief executive of its Northwest operations, who also had a multi-million dollar compensation package last year, sent a memo to employees Wednesday about their compensation in advance of a filing to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission that will detail their full packages.

The move comes as levels of executive compensation have become a lightning rod for criticism. Delta executives’ compensation could influence campaigns by unions from Northwest seeking to organize Delta flight attendants and ground workers through the merger.

The memo said Anderson’s compensation amounted to $2.5 million in “take home pay,” which includes $987,714 in cash and benefits plus vested stock. Bastian had $5.2 million by the same IRS take-home pay measure, including $1.3 million in cash and benefits plus vested stock.

But that doesn’t include other forms of compensation such as stock awards and options from Delta’s merger with Northwest Airlines and its emergence from bankruptcy. Those additional elements of compensation will yield larger numbers, possible “multiples of those amounts,” the executives acknowledged in the memo.

The memo also said Anderson’s and Bastian’s base pay did not change last year and will not change this year. Since Delta was not profitable last year, employees did not receive profit sharing and Anderson and Bastian said they did not get an annual cash incentive bonus.

In 2007, Anderson’s compensation totaled about $11.3 million. More than 90 percent of his pay was tied to stock and options. Former Delta Air Lines Chief Operating Officer James Whitehurst in 2007 was the third-highest paid executive among Georgia’s largest public companies, with total compensation of $15.5 million. In 2006, when Delta was in bankruptcy and its stock was delisted, Delta’s highest-paid executive made about $550,000.