6 stupid ways to lose your job when you work in the airline industry

Losing one’s job happens to everyone, whether one is fired or puts oneself in an ejector seat.

But there are some ways more stupid than others and some things largely avoidable.

Examples through several recent situations in the airline world.

The CEO who smuggles a Harley Davidson onto a plane

When Garuda Indonesia took possession of a brand new A330-990 Neo last month, the plane was supposed to be empty of cargo, but customs was surprised to find 15 cargo boxes, one of them containing a Harley Davidson.

The motorcycle was destined for Garuda Indonesia CEO I Gusti Ngurah Askhara Danadiput, who had it purchased in 2018 and then paid for through the personal account of Garuda’s finance director in Amsterdam before taking advantage of this ferry flight to have it illegally transported to Indonesia to avoid paying the very high taxes in Indonesia.

The said CEO has since been fired and the airline officials who claimed that the motorcycle and other products were returned legally (although it is not known who they were for) are facing prosecution for perjury.

Flight attendant fired for stealing milk on a flight

This is what happened to Ida Gomez Llanos, a flight attendant at Delta, who was accused by the airline of having helped herself to the milk stocks of a flight for her personal use.

The flight attendant is a “senior” of the airline since she has been working for Delta since 1962 (57 years of seniority) and she does not hear it that way. At 79 years of age (it’s about retirement age), her version is quite different: her seniority gives her a salary of $250,000 a year and the airline has been trying for years to invent faults to get rid of her.

She filed a complaint.

Time will tell if this is a stupid mistake or an outrageous practice on the part of the airline.

Fired for wanting to make his airline profitable

They are definitely not kidding in Indonesia and at Garuda, which before firing its last CEO had also fired his predecessor and 6 of the 8 members of its board of directors for reasons that are more than surprising.

While the airline has long been in financial difficulty and the management had embarked on a program to reduce costs and its fleet, the government did not hear it that way and judged that the management was wrong!

In the opinion of the new CEO (the Harley Davidson fan):

“The management has to deal with the economic turbulence, starting with the depreciation of the rupee and the increase in fuel prices. The main objective of the new management is … to increase employee happiness. Because making employees happy will improve customer service.”

Goodbye austerity, cost reduction and return to profitability, hello happiness at work, priority of the new management.

A motorcycle does not make you happy.

Promising to resign following a referendum that no one asked for

Running an airline is complicated, especially when it comes to reform. For this, the ally of leaders is time: time to reform, time for the results to be felt. What an airline needs is stability.

No problem. Then CEO of Air France-KLM Jean-Marc Janaillac organized a referendum that no one asked him, promising to resign if the vote was not favorable. Result of races: no sooner arrived, no sooner left, and replaced by Ben Smith to whom we wish full success and more vista.

Fired for inviting a starlet into the cockpit

A captain of Mexican domestic airline Magnicharters was fired in 2014 for letting a local TV starlet, a woman named Esmeralda Ugalde, get into the cockpit and take pictures, obviously in flight that she shared on Twitter.

Double stupidity then: contravening the security rules and letting the evidence become public. All this for a starlet who is as unknown as the airline in question.

Same punishment a few months ago in China for an Air Guilin pilot who let a female passenger into the cockpit during a commercial flight.