Air Berlin VP Tries to Help His Team Get New Jobs, Ends Up Fired
It's been 12 days since Germany's second-largest airline, Air Berlin, declared bankruptcy. While it is still flying thanks to a loan from the German government, negotiations continue to determine the future of the airline. Its most likely fate is being bought in separate pieces by competitors interested in its fleet or airport slots, although Ryanair has expressed interest in purchasing the entire airline. Meanwhile, Air Berlin's Topbonus mileage program has also gone bankrupt.
Seemingly not one to wait around to see what's going to happen, Air Berlin's VP of E-Commerce Pascal Volz recently set up a website devoted to getting his entire e-commerce team hired as a group by another airline or company. It's hard to imagine many companies in need of an entire e-commerce team and not just a member or two, but Volz evidently wanted to do what he saw as the right thing for his team.
Still, not surprisingly, attempting to get your entire team hired elsewhere while that team is still employed didn't turn out too well. One member of the team is now looking for a job a lot more urgently than the rest. According a story in the German-language Berliner Morgenpost on Sunday, Volz was "fristlos entlassen" (fired without notice).
According to the paper, Air Berlin considered the appearance of the website to be "business-damaging behavior". That's because it "contained internal information about the company, which would have led to conclusions about Air Berlin's marketing strategy. In addition, the website has been created during working hours."
Visitors to the website will now find that the landing page notes that the "Original website not available anymore." However, if you scroll down, you'll see the welcome message from "Dr. Pascal Volz, VP E-Commerce & Online Sales", with links to his LinkedIn and Xing professional profiles. We checked, and Dr. Volz hasn't quite gotten around to updating his LinkedIn profile with his new employment status:
Best wishes to Dr. Volz, the rest of his team and the 2,500 employees of Air Berlin in this unsteady time.
H/T: One Mile At A Time
