A Tiny Airline With Really Big Bonuses – $1.5 Million Of Them
Posted December 15, 2008 12:00 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
How much CEOs deserve to be paid is a topic of much debate in these dark economic days. But spats over executive pay are not confined to the boardrooms of New York and Toronto. The latest one is taking place in Canada’s Arctic, where a scandal is brewing over the huge bonuses doled out to senior executives at First Air.
The airline, controlled by Inuit-owned Makivik Corp., handed company executives $1.5 million worth of bonuses last summer. Pita Aatam, chairman of First Air and president of Makivik, received a record-breaking bonus of $600,000, and George Berthe, Makivik’s corporate secretary, received a bonus of $250,000, according to Nunatsiaq News. By comparison, the head of Air Canada, Montie Brewer, took home a $690,000 bonus last year-only $90,000 more than Aatam, even though Air Canada has revenues of $2.5 billion compared to just $200 million for First Air.
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About First Air:
- Number of years in business: 62
- Number of scheduled service destinations: 29
- Number of First Air employees: 1000
- Number of scheduled flights per week: 260
- Number of passengers per year: 200,000
- Number of kilos of cargo per year: 20 million
- Number of aircraft in First Air’s fleet: 20
- Airline codes: “7F”
- Scheduled service provided to 25 northern communities. This represents about 80% of northern Canada’s population
- First Air’s two northern “hubs” are located at Yellowknife and Iqaluit
- Southern entry points are: Ottawa, Montreal, Winnipeg and Edmonton
Image and table information courtesy firstair.ca
