Just to illustrate my point a little further....
Wolfgang Mayrhuber - Lufthansa CEO - €3.5m
Christoph Franz - Lufthansa CFO (and CEO since 1/1/11) - €2.4m
Stephan Gemkow - Lufthansa COO - €2.4m
Jocahim Hunold - Air Berlin CEO - €1.2 (down from €1.6m in 2009) - Air Berlin lost €80m in 2010.
These are the salaries the Aer Lingus board need to compete with in order to retain Muller on an island in the Atlantic. Lufthansa would quite happily poach him for a holding role (e.g. LH Cargo) prior to moving him up to bigger and better things on the LH Exec board. Yes, Muller has implemented cost cutting resulting in lower salaries for staff but show me an airline that hasn't.
Watching Aer Lingus from afar prior to Muller's arrival, I got the impression of an airline racing to the bottom trying to compete with Ryanair with no real direction. Muller has changed that by developing a strategy and being systematic in the manner in which the business is run. Muller's salary is the price to pay for the airline not going down a painful road of death by a thousand cuts which I think would happen were he not there. In 4/5 years, there will be a decent succession plan in place and then someone else can take over, but right now, he's needed and €1.4m seems to be the price...
All the best,
P2C