Former Air NZ boss Christopher Luxon issued rights worth nearly $2m

Former Air New Zealand chief executive Christopher Luxon has been issued rights under the company's long term incentive plan. photo/Greg Bowker.

Former Air New Zealand boss Christopher Luxon will be hoping the airline continues to perform well after he was issued with performance rights worth nearly $2 million.

Luxon and 10 other executives were awarded a total of 4,746,580 performance rights under a long term incentive plan originally set up in 2015.

The rights were issued on October 21 and approved by the directors of the company on September 25 - Luxon's last day as the CEO.

The performance rights give the executives the right to receive ordinary shares subject to certain conditions being met on or after September 2022.

Those conditions include the company's share price outperforming a comparison index made up of a 50-50 mix of the NZX All Index and the Bloomberg World Airline index over a three year period.

Half of the rights will convert to shares if the share price matches the index over the period and for each 1 per cent the share price beats the index a further 2.5 per cent of the rights will convert to shares until the maximum of 100 per cent has been reached.

At the most recent share price of $2.82 the rights are worth around $1.95 million to Luxon.

Across the 11 people the rights were issued to the total worth could be worth as much as $13.4 million.

Luxon already owns 4,303,414 shares in Air New Zealand worth $12.14 million at the current share price.

The 49-year-old spent eight years at the company and nearly seven as chief executive.

He will now pursue a career in politics after announcing he will stand in the Botany seat in Auckland for the National party at next year's general election.

Air New Zealand chief financial officer Jeff McDowall is currently the acting chief executive and will hold the fort until new CEO Greg Foran, a Kiwi who has been working as a top-level boss at Walmart takes on the top job.