Mesaba Airlines used bankruptcy laws to extract pay cuts from its employees, but Paul Foley, CEO of Mesaba's former parent company, was given a $550,000 bonus for his performance during the Chapter 11 case. In a regulatory filing Thursday, MAIR Holdings Inc. reported that it paid Foley nearly $1.1 million in compensation for the 2007 fiscal year that ended March 31. Mesaba was in bankruptcy during that entire period and ultimately was sold to Northwest Airlines in April. "Paul Foley is the poster child for obscene executive compensation," Tom Wychor, chairman of the Mesaba pilots union, said Thursday. "MAIR is a leech living off the pilfered earnings from Mesaba Airlines," Wychor said.
See "Mesaba pilots blast $1.1 million for CEO", Liz Fedor, Minneapolis Star Tribune, July 19, 2007