In Portugal there is a surreal story involving the government and is shaking up the air transport sector. After a manager of the national airline Tap Air Portugal was involved in a scandal, the public shareholder (the State holds about 72.5% of the capital) fired the managing director, Christine Ourmières Widener, on live television.

In addition to the audience boom and the media coverage of the case, which soon became an inevitable topic of debate among public opinion, the fact that the manager is still in his command post is causing discussion, despite the fact that a month has passed since his dismissal. This is because the woman appealed to the court, which froze the position pending a sentence.

Her expulsion came from none other than the finance minister, Fernando Medina, who fired her together with the chairman of the board, Manuel Beja, after a scandal over the EUR 500,000 severance pay granted to a member of the board. The situation is all the more paradoxical if we consider that Ourmières Widener declared in a hearing to Parliament that he was still "in office, but without guidelines to impose, in a critical period for the company" which, despite the crisis, closed the 2022 budget with a profit of 65.6 million euros.