His pay had been ?525,000, though in October the airline announced that Eddington and 12 top executives reduced their pay by 15 percent to trim costs. That would have brought his pay to about ?446,000 a year. He declined to be interviewed for this article.
To cope with changes in the industry following the Sept. 11 attacks, Eddington appointed five senior managers to carry out a study of the carrier's future size and shape. The results are to be released later this month.
The CEO said this month in the online edition of the airline's internal newsletter that the goal is to achieve 10 percent operating margins. The closest his airline ever came was 8 percent, in 1997. Its average over the last five years has been 4.8 percent. Lufthansa's is 8 percent, Air France's 3.2 percent. The five-year average for Ryanair is 21.8 percent.
The airline needs a partner within Europe to compete with Air France's tie with Alitalia SpA and Lufthansa's links with Scandinavian Airlines System and BMI British Midland Airways. The smaller airlines feed traffic to Lufthansa and Air France while the big airlines provide them with a network of international destinations.
British Airways may still try to win KLM as an ally, though the Dutch carrier is likely to be courted by Air France's SkyTeam Alliance as well. The Dutch carrier's base at Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport has six runways and is a main European gateway for travelers going to destinations across the continent.
Eddington also needs a new trans-Atlantic strategy after the scrapping of its plans to ally with American. The British carrier's main focus is point-to-point travel between London and major US cities.
While British Airways is the largest carrier on North Atlantic routes, it lacks the ties to destinations throughout the US that competitors get with code sharing, or the ability to sell tickets on each others routes.
Lufthansa's tie with UAL Corp's United Airlines and Air France's with Delta Air Lines Inc. both have regulators' approval to share passengers and revenue, helping to increase profit.
British Airways has said its scrutinizing its whole network, though trimming routes can be tricky. No-frills upstarts including Ryanair and EasyJet Plc have been eroding British Airways' market share on short routes, and they're stealing business passengers, too, as they expand.
"If they cut back then they open the way for the competition," said Liz Burke, a transport analyst for Aegon Fund Managers Ltd.
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