Air carriers may be flying through rough weathers, but their top executives have got handsome pay hikes, while CEO of crisis-ridden Kingfisher has emerged as the second-highest paid among all his  peers at Vijay Mallya-led UB Group.

Among the country's three listed airlines also, Kingfisher CEO Sanjay Agarwal's pay package was the  second highest in the last fiscal ended March 31, 2012, as per the remuneration details provided in their annual reports.

Recently, Kingfisher had to announce a temporary lockout due to employee unrest, triggered by  non-payment of salaries to the staff. While Agarwal has said that he has also not been paid any salary since April as there were no funds, his remuneration in the fiscal year 2011-12 rose nearly to Rs 4.01 crore, from Rs 2.12 crore in 2010-11.

As per the annual reports of seven listed companies of the UB group, its Chairman and main promoter Vijay Mallya was paid a total amount of about Rs 1.43 crore (mostly in sitting fees) from various group companies.     

While Mallya was not paid anything at Kingfisher and another group firm UB Engineering, he got sitting fees of Rs 1.2 lakh from United Spirits, Rs one lakh each at United Breweries Ltd and Mangalore Chemicals and Fertilizers, Rs 34,550 at McDowell Holdings and Rs 1.4 lakh at United Breweries (Holdings) Ltd.

Besides, Mallya received remuneration from two overseas subsidiaries, amounting to USD 120,000  (nearly Rs 63 lakh) and 89,600 (about Rs 76 lakh) British Pound during the year 2011-12. Two of the seven listed companies -- McDowell Holdings and UB Holdings Ltd -- did not pay any remuneration to  their Managing Director Harish Bhat, Mangalore Chemicals and Fertilisers' MD Deepak Anand took a  token salary of Re 1 per month.

However, Harish Bhat received remuneration of Rs 1.31 crore as an executive of an associate company of UB Holdings Ltd.