Airline leadership, COVID-19 hardship, and skin in the game: the impact of airline CEOs’ and Board of Directors’ pay cuts

Evangelia Pantelaki and Andreas Papatheodorou

Chapter 9 in Research Handbook on Air Transport Leadership and Governance, 2025, pp 116-137 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: This chapter is about the adjustment of the leadership styles in the airline companies under unpredicted emergency conditions and focuses on CEOs’ and Board of Directors’ pay cuts during the COVID-19 pandemic. Initially, we provide an overview of the scientific literature about the existing leadership theories related to airlines and then analyse the challenges and changes in leadership styles under crisis conditions. Having placed the study within this theoretical context, we focus on pay cuts that several airline leaders have accepted as a response to the COVID-19 pandemic. We examine the publicity that this measure has attracted and comment further on whether the desired results have been achieved. The overarching lesson from this chapter shows that leadership flexibility and action according to environmental conditions are crucial factors in guiding the leadership paradigm. Nevertheless, the COVID-19 pandemic showed that, in many cases, CEOs’ pay cuts were not enough to show empathy to the employees.

Keywords: Airlines; Leadership; CEOs; Board of Directors; Pay cuts; COVID-19 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
ISBN: 9781803926971
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