Denver International Airport has a survival plan if United Airlines fails. Raise fees for the remaining carriers 78%. Trouble is, most of those other carriers are also in or near bankruptcy. That leaves the flying public to pick up the cost of saving Colorado’s key transportation hub.

When it comes to the struggling airlines, it’s not just the flying public that is picking up the tab for failed business plans and excessive overhead. It’s the employees and, obviously, the shareholders. But, as is the case across large swaths of corporate America, the senior executives who, in many cases, are responsible for their companies’ collapse, are not sharing the pain.

When failing companies ask employees to take huge pay cuts, when they’re laying off thousands of wage-earners, when they’re slashing pension benefits, it’s astonishing that the top executives of those companies are still enjoying stratospheric compensation packages. Their standard-of-living actually rises while the rest of us take it in the shorts.

Admittedly, United Airlines CEO, Glenn Tilton, came to United to save Denver’s dominant carrier from doom. He did cut his pay 11%. Yet, while he demanded $2.6 billion in concessions from United’s employees, he still received a signing bonus of $3 million, $4.5 million in pension benefits and nearly $900,000 in base pay, not to mention 1.15 million stock options. For a flight attendant making $35,000 per year before her pay cut, that must look rather insulting.

Even worse, American Airlines CEO, Donald Carty, hid his executives’ excessive compensation from American’s employees. While they were voting to sacrifice their pay to salvage their employer, American’s top management got retention bonuses of twice their base pay and a retirement trust fund of $41 million. Lower level employees took cuts totaling $1.6 billion. No wonder line employees are furious. Shareholders should be outraged also.

Meanwhile, in bankrupt companies across the country, employees have found themselves without jobs and often without pensions. Shareholders, who trusted executives to manage companies in their best interests, have lost their money. But, executive compensation continues to rise, even for the CEO’s of companies in bankruptcy.

As Fortune asked in its latest edition on executive pay, “Have they no shame?” It’s high time for executive pay to be taken out of the realm of friends helping friends and into the world of accountability. For starters, boards of directors need to take responsibility for their stakeholders—shareholders, employees and customers—not just their buddies, the CEO’s. Next, they need to base compensation on performance, not “market practices”, which merely serve to ratchet up pay. Boards and CEO’s need to establish and publicize stringent, measurable goals and pay executives for reaching those goals, not just for being there.

Shareholders, particularly pension funds that hold large blocs of corporate America, now need to flex their muscle on behalf of their members, the real owners of companies. They need to hold management accountable for their companies’ performance by voting their proxies and demanding results-based compensation.

To clear out the fog surrounding executive compensation, companies should report all pieces of executive pay packages in one place in their prospectus so all stakeholders know who is getting what. That includes base pay, stock options and special pension benefits. Improving transparency and trust should be a priority.

Finally, as in all corporate governance, ethics and fairness need to guide board and management decisions about compensation at all levels of the organization. If lower level employees are asked to make sacrifices for the benefit of the company, senior executives should do the same. If taxpayers are asked to help bail out a critical industry, such as the airlines, we should not be gouged even further by its executives.

I use DIA constantly. I think DIA and all its airlines are essential assets to our economy. I want them to be run for the benefit of all stakeholders, not just the few at the top. As a customer of, and very frequent flier on, United Airlines, I’m happy to help save the airline. But, I’m not willing to subsidize exorbitant pay for its floundering executives.