Introduction : Based on annual per capita salary, Spring Airlines' employees are the ones that make the most money among A-share listed airlines, and Spring Airlines is also the listed airline with the highest net profit last year.

Author | Chen Shanshan, First Financial

With the 2024 financial reports of A-share listed airlines, the salary situation of executives and employees of various airlines has also surfaced.

A reporter from the First Financial Daily reviewed the financial reports of various companies and found that based on annual per capita salary, Spring Airlines' employees are the ones that make the most money among A-share listed airlines, and Spring Airlines is also the listed airline with the highest net profit last year.

Judging from the annual salary of executives, the salary of flight cadres is generally higher, even higher than that of the company's "top leader".

The most profitable airline employees make the most

The reporter calculated the per capita annual salary of the seven listed airlines in China and found that the average annual salary of the two airlines with Shanghai as the main base exceeded 300,000 yuan in 2024.

Among them, Spring Airlines (601021.SH) has 8,500 employees in 2024, with an average annual salary of 388,000 yuan; Juneyao Airlines (603885.SH) has 10,600 employees in 2024, with an average annual salary of 322,000 yuan.

The third-ranked annual salary per capita is HNA Holdings (601221.SH), with 34,900 employees in 2024 and an annual salary of 276,000 yuan.

Next is Air China (601111.SH), among the three major aviation companies, with an employee number of 104,900 in 2024, with an annual salary of 265,000 yuan per person; China Eastern Airlines (600115.SH) had an employee number of 85,100, with an annual salary of 259,000 yuan per person; China Southern Airlines (600029.SH) had an employee number of 102,500 yuan per person, with an annual salary of 233,000 yuan per person.

The last one is China Airlines (002928.SZ), the first listed regional airline in China, with 5,700 employees in 2024 and an annual salary of 179,000 yuan per person.

The two airlines with the highest employee salaries are also the two listed airlines that make the most money in 2024: Spring Airlines' net profit in 2024 was 2.273 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 0.69%; Juneyao Airlines' net profit in 2024 was 914 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 17.52%.

However, another profitable private airline, China Airlines, has an employee salary level that is not proportional to its performance, and ranks at the bottom among listed airlines.

According to the reporter, Spring Airlines' employees are not only the most profitable among listed airlines, but many people also share dividends through indirect shareholding.

As early as before Spring Airlines was established, the founder Wang Zhenghua distributed a large part of the equity of Spring Airlines' parent company Spring Airlines to the company's middle and senior management and backbone employees. After Spring Airlines went public, Spring Airlines' four major shareholder companies were also held by natural persons, most of which were executives and business backbones of Spring Airlines and Spring Airlines, and they became indirect shareholders of Spring Airlines.

Wang Zhenghua also told reporters that Spring Airlines did not intend to introduce strategic investors or financial investors before it went public, but was willing to let employees share the dividends of the company's growth.

Such a mechanism setting is also an important reason why Spring Airlines, a company known as absolutely "stingy", is full of enthusiasm for employees. Most of the working cadres believe that although working in the Spring and Autumn Period is hard, they have a bright future.

Flying cadres lead the annual salary of executives

The reporter sorted out the financial reports of various airlines and found that the executives of Spring Airlines received relatively higher annual salaries in listed companies. Among all listed airline executives, only some of Spring Airlines' executives had annual salaries of more than 2 million yuan.

According to Spring Airlines' annual report, three executives have annual salary of more than 2 million yuan in 2024, namely Vice President Wang Gang (2.6677 million), Vice President Shen Wei (2.573 million), and Chief Pilot Yang Gang (2.4562 million yuan). The annual salary received by these three management teams from listed companies is higher than that of Spring Airlines' chairman and president, while Spring Airlines' chairman Wang Yu received an annual salary (1.0924 million) in listed companies is lower than that of President Wang Zhijie (1.4548 million).

According to the reporter, the above three Spring Airlines executives with annual salary of over 2 million yuan are all pilots. In the civil aviation industry, the salaries of pilots and flight cadres are generally higher.

For example, among the executives of China Southern Airlines, the highest-paid chief pilot Wang Renjie (1.8336 million), is also the one with the highest salary in 2024. Although the chairman and general manager of China Southern Airlines do not receive salaries from listed companies, according to the salary information of the heads of 97 central enterprises previously disclosed by the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission in 2023, the first/second-in-commendations of China Southern Airlines Group, AVIC Group and China Eastern Airlines Group all pay about 800,000 yuan.

According to the reporter, due to the strict upper limit, in some central enterprises, the salary of leadership team members may not be as high as that of their subsidiaries, and there may be more differences than those of private companies or listed companies in the same industry.

At Air China, the annual salary of the safety director and the chief pilot are close to 2 million yuan, reaching 1.9248 million and 1.8422 million yuan respectively, but it is not as high as the company's chief information engineer (1.9601 million).

In contrast, the salaries received by China Univ Air from listed companies are as low as employees, including Chairman Hu Xiaojun's annual salary of 1.5443 million yuan in 2024, CEO Wu Longjiang's annual salary of 853,600 yuan, and President Li Sansheng's annual salary of 751,800 yuan.

It is worth noting that in 2024 and the first quarter of 2025, China Airlines made profits, and its net profit in the first quarter was the only year-on-year increase among the four private listed airlines.