Aviation industry is facing severe challenges such as increase in fuel prices, heavy competition, and changing customer needs. By giving importance to the human resource issues and strategically utilizing staff capabilities, firms in aviation industry can better addresses such challenges. In this context, in current study, our objective was to test the effects of High Performance Work System (HPWS) on employee’s perceived psychological empowerment and proactive behavior. Additionally, the employee’s perceived psychological empowerment is proposed as mediator between the relationship of HPWS and employee proactive behavior. Primary data for this study is collected using the survey measure adapted from previous sources. Through convenience sampling, data is collected from staff from selected airline firms located in the UAE region (n=177). Findings indicate that HPWS dimensions including training and compensation have positive and significant effects on employee’s proactive behavior. Similarly, the HPWS dimensions including recruitment and compensation have positive and significant effects on employee’s perceived psychological empowerment. Further, our findings indicate that psychological empowerment function as a mediator between the HPWS dimensions of recruitment and compensation and employee proactive behavior. Our findings have implications for the management of the aviation industry firms.