The probably biggest Christmas present in the country is almost 40 metres long, twelve metres high and can fly at 870 kilometres per hour. The airline Eurowings surprises its 2,300 employees at the end of the year with a very distinct gift as a sign of recognition and appreciation for their commitment in the crisis year 2020: it dedicates a specially painted Airbus A320 from its current fleet to the staff and symbolically thanks the ‘best team in the world’ in this way.
For the eulogy, the airline lets the Airbus A320 with the registration D-AIZS speak for itself: “Fuelled by?” is written in huge letters on the fuselage of the aircraft - and underneath: “The world’s greatest team.” The German airline is thus sending a widely visible signal for team play in time of crisis in two languages - German on one side and English on the other.
Eurowings CEO Jens Bischof said: “Hardly any other industry has been hit as hard by the pandemic as aviation and tourism. Whether flight attendants, pilots or staff on the ground - they have all been unable to do their jobs as usual for months. The fact that Eurowings guests were able to take off at all this year is owed to the passionate commitment and high flexibility of all our employees. A remarkable team spirit drives us at Eurowings repeatedly and makes us stand up for each other in difficult times. That is why we are saying thank you in an extraordinary way in a likewise extraordinary year: with a team airplane for the entire staff.”
Team Airplane will be launched in the first quarter of 2021. The airplane will receive its special bilingual varnish during a regular maintenance stay in the first quarter of 2021 and will then be stationed on a rolling basis at the Eurowings bases in Düsseldorf, Cologne/Bonn, Hamburg, Stuttgart, Mallorca, Vienna, Salzburg and Pristina.
Eurowings is the first German airline to dedicate an aircraft from its fleet with an exclusive design to its own employees. Special lacquering such as the black and yellow ‘Team Airbus’ of the cooperation partner Borussia Dortmund or the ‘Europa-Park Plane’ have been among the most popular photo motifs at Europe's airports for years.
