Delta Air Lines Inc's chief executive had total compensation of about $5.9 million last year, up about 77 percent from the year before, boosted by values for stock and option awards, the company said in its proxy filing on Thursday.

The total compensation figure for CEO Richard Anderson also includes salary, amounts for change in pension value and personal benefits. Anderson, who became Delta CEO in September 2007 and was CEO at Northwest Airlines from February 2001 to November 2004, received a salary of $600,000 in 2008 but only $200,000 in 2007.

Anderson had $3.6 million in stock awards in 2008, up from $2.3 million in 2007; and $1.6 million in stock options, up from about $300,000 in 2007. Delta said amounts for stock and options awards do not represent monies that were received but detail the expense recognized by the company.

Atlanta-based Delta merged with Northwest last year, creating the world's largest airline.

President Edward Bastian had total compensation of $8.8 million last year, up 90 percent from $4.6 billion the year before, the filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission showed.

On Wednesday, Anderson and Bastian had sent employees a memo saying that their take-home pay amounts for 2008 came to $2.5 million for Anderson and $5.2 million for Bastian.

The executives also said in the memo, which was filed with the SEC, that their base pay will not change this year and that they collected no bonus for 2008 since Delta was unprofitable.

The proxy said Anderson was granted a special award of 1.5 million stock options and 760,000 shares of restricted stock in connection with the Northwest merger. It said the award vests over a three-year period.

Delta also said Anderson waived change-in-control provisions in his pay arrangements in early 2008 and as a result his equity awards did not vest at the closing of the Northwest merger. But for the waiver, he would have realized about $5.2 million for the vesting of shares and restricted stock awards on the merger's closing date in late October, the filing said.

(Reporting by Karen Jacobs; Editing by Tim Dobbyn)