If this is how the determine their pay and benefits, then let them eat cake and share it too:
Determination of Compensation
The Compensation Committee meets periodically to specifically review and determine adjustments, if any, to the CEO’s compensation, including his base salary, annual bonus compensation and long-term equity awards, and to review and consider recommendations of the CEO with respect to the other NEOs’ base salaries, annual bonus compensation and long-term equity awards. For 2015 , the Compensation Committee determined each individual component of compensation for our NEOs. Decisions of our Compensation Committee pertaining to the compensation of our NEOs and the Company’s executive compensation programs are regularly reported to, and in many instances concurred by, the full Board. The Compensation Committee annually evaluates our company-wide performance against the approved operating plan for the prior fiscal year. The Compensation Committee also meets periodically to discuss compensation-related matters as they arise during the year. For each year, our CEO evaluates each other NEO’s individual performance and contributions to the Company’s success and reports to the Compensation Committee his recommendations regarding each element of the other NEOs’ compensation. The CEO does not participate in any formal discussion with the Compensation Committee regarding decisions on his own compensation, and he recuses himself from meetings when his individual performance is evaluated and his compensation is discussed and decided.
In July 2011, the Compensation Committee engaged Willis Towers Watson as an independent compensation advisor to assist the Compensation Committee with our executive compensation program design. Since that time, Willis Towers Watson has worked closely with the Compensation Committee to determine an appropriate executive compensation strategy that supports our core business objectives: maintaining low costs, profitable growth, safe and reliable operations and sound cash flow. In considering approaches to executive compensation, the Compensation Committee continuously reviews ways to strengthen the alignment of management’s interests with the interests of shareholders, strengthen our ability to attract, motivate and retain key executive talent and design plans that account for the relatively high volatility of our industry.
In order to assist the Compensation Committee in setting appropriate compensation metrics and target amounts, in October 2015, Willis Towers Watson provided an updated competitive assessment of our 2015 executive compensation levels. After consideration, and based on recommendations from Willis Towers Watson, the Compensation Committee approved the following public companies as an appropriate talent-competitor peer group for compensation market comparison purposes for 2015 (the "Compensation Peer Group"):
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Alaska Air Group, Inc.
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Allegiant Travel Company
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Hawaiian Holdings Inc.
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JetBlue Airways Corporation
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Republic Airways Holdings Inc.
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Sky West Inc.
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Virgin America
The Compensation Peer Group was the same peer group used in 2014 with the addition of Virgin America. The selection of companies for the Compensation Peer Group focused on small to medium-sized passenger carriers as an appropriate population for assessing the amounts and percentile rankings of compensation elements for NEOs, including base salaries, short-term incentives (bonuses) and long-term equity-based incentives. Due to its initial public offering based equity grants, Virgin America's long-term incentives data was not included in the 2015 benchmarking analysis. Data for Allegiant Travel Company's CEO (who is also a large shareholder of such company) was also excluded due to particularities of that executive's pay package. The Compensation Committee determined that the Company's competition for executive talent came significantly from the foregoing listed carriers. Willis Towers Watson primarily used the Compensation Peer Group to assess the competitiveness of our Chief Executive Officer’s, Chief Operating Officer’s, and Network and Revenue Management Senior Vice President's compensation, as these positions would normally be recruited from other passenger airlines.
In assessing the compensation of our Chief Financial Officer and General Counsel, Willis Towers Watson used a blended approach consisting of both Compensation Peer Group proxy data and broader industries survey data, adjusted for revenue size, as these positions could also generally be recruited from companies in other industries. For its October 2015 analysis, the survey data were taken from the following three executive pay surveys:


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Seabury 2015 Airline Industry Compensation Survey Analysis;
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Towers Watson 2015 Compensation Data Bank (CDB) General Industry Executive Compensation Survey Report; and
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William M. Mercer 2015 Executive Compensation Survey.
The data from the two general industry executive surveys were reduced in scope to focus on companies with revenues approximating the Company’s last twelve months of revenues of approximately $2 billion as of June 30, 2015. The Compensation Committee was not aware of the individual participating companies in the surveys and reviewed the data in a summarized fashion.
At the same time, the Compensation Committee also approved the following larger group of publicly traded airline companies (the "Performance Share Peer Group") as an appropriate investor-capital peer group for measuring total shareholder return under the performance share units awarded to our executive officers in the first quarter of 2015:
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Alaska Air Group, Inc.
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Allegiant Travel Company
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American Airlines Group, Inc.
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Delta Airlines
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Hawaiian Holdings Inc.
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JetBlue Airways Corporation
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Republic Airways Holdings Inc.
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Sky West Inc.
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Southwest Airlines
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United Continental
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Virgin America
The larger group of airlines was used for comparing the Company’s total shareholder return under our performance share units, because the Company believes it competes with all other public airline companies for equity investors. With respect to the 2016 compensation market assessment and 2016 award of performance share units, the Compensation Committee considered and approved Willis Towers Watson's recommendation to add WestJet Airlines to the Compensation Peer Group and made no changes to the Performance Share Peer Group used in 2015. On February 25, 2016, a few days after the 2016 equity awards were made (as described below), Republic Airways Holdings, Inc. filed for bankruptcy and per the terms and conditions of the applicable performance share units award agreements, that company will remain in the Performance Share Peer group(s) for any and all outstanding awards of performance share units and will be assigned a TSR of -100%. On March 14, 2016, the Compensation Committee, upon recommendation of Willis Towers Watson, removed Republic Airways Holdings, Inc. from the Performance Share Peer Group for purposes of all performance share units awarded after March 14, 2016.