Alaska Airlines, Virgin America and Horizon Air employees receive $148 million in bonuses

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Jan 26, 2018, 08:01 ET

SEATTLE, Jan. 26, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Employees of Alaska Air Group companies Alaska Airlines, Virgin America and Horizon Air are receiving $118 million in incentive bonuses today. For most employees, this equates to an average of more than 7 percent of their annual pay in 2017. In addition, 23,000 Air Group employees will receive a one-time $1,000 bonus on Jan. 29 from additional tax savings the company expects to receive this year.

The company's annual bonus, called Performance Based Pay (PBP), is determined by meeting or exceeding specific company-wide goals for safety, customer satisfaction, cost control, customer loyalty and profit. For the ninth year in a row, employees will enjoy a payout of about an additional month's pay.

"In light of so many important achievements in the last year, including meeting several integration milestones, I'd like to thank all 23,000 employees at Alaska, Virgin America, Horizon and McGee Air Services for their hard work and laser-like focus on safety," said Ben Minicucci, Alaska Airlines' president and COO. "It's an honor to work alongside such dedicated, committed employees who deliver outstanding service to our guests every day."

The PBP bonus is in addition to the approximately $7 million in monthly operational bonuses that employees earned over 2017 for achieving monthly on-time and customer satisfaction goals. The combined monthly, annual and one-time bonuses paid to employees total $148 million.

Geographic breakdown:

About $62 million in annual bonuses — more than 52 percent of the total — is being paid to Alaska, Virgin America, and Horizon Air employees in the Puget Sound area
$27 million — or 23 percent of the total — is going to employees throughout California
$12 million is being paid to employees in the Oregon
$8.1 million is going to employees throughout the state of Alaska

The bonuses come 13 months after the acquisition of Virgin America. Since then, Alaska Airlines and Virgin America employees have been hard at work creating an airline people love. Some of the most significant integration milestones employees have accomplished since December 2016 include:

Obtaining a single operating certificate from the FAA on Jan. 11, combining thousands of procedures, manuals and training for all Airbus and Boeing operations
Launching a wear-test for new employee uniforms
Transitioning to one loyalty and credit card program
Co-locating Alaska and Virgin American operations in 22 of 31 airports
Building Alaska's expansive network with 44 new routes, in addition to the 38 routes added with the acquisition of Virgin America
Moving to the same human resources, finance and payroll systems

By late April, Minicucci expects the airlines will have accomplished 75 percent of the integration milestones with the shift to a single reservation system, website, check-in kiosk, app and call center. Learn more about the integration at https://blog.alaskaair.com/alaska-airlines/virgin-america-alaska-single-operating-certificate/.

Alaska Airlines, together with Virgin America and its regional partners, flies 44 million guests a year to more than 115 destinations with an average of 1,200 daily flights across the United States and to Mexico, Canada and Costa Rica. With Alaska and Alaska Global Partners, guests can earn and redeem miles on flights to more than 900 destinations worldwide. Alaska Airlines ranked "Highest in Customer Satisfaction Among Traditional Carriers in North America" in the J.D. Power North America Satisfaction Study for 10 consecutive years from 2008 to 2017. Learn more about Alaska's award-winning service at newsroom.alaskaair.com and blog.alaskaair.com. Alaska Airlines, Virgin America and Horizon Air are subsidiaries of Alaska Air Group (NYSE: ALK).