Aviation

Male airline CEO takes pay cut to match female predecessor

by Morgan Gstalter - 01/29/18 2:39 PM ET

EasyJet’s new CEO is taking a pay cut to match his female predecessor’s salary.

Johan Lundgren is voluntarily reducing his annual salary to show his commitment to providing equal pay at the U.K-based discount airline, the company said in a Monday statement.

Lundgren’s salary, originally set for $1.04 million, will be reduced by nearly $50,000 to match what Carolyn McCall made last year in the same job.

{mosads}The overall gender pay gap at easyJet is 51.7 percent, the statement said.

“This is driven not by unequal pay for women at easyJet but by the massive gender imbalance in our, and the aviation industry’s, pilot community,” the statement said.

Only 6 percent of current easyJet pilots are women, something Lundgren hopes to change, saying he wants to increase that number to 20 percent by 2020.

Six male journalists at the BBC took pay cuts last week in solidarity with a female editor, Carrie Gracie, who stepped down when she learned she was not being paid the same as her male colleagues.

Tags Airline Equal pay gender discrimination Gender equality gender gap United Kingdom