Dustin Curtis:

A FEW MONTHS AGO, I wrote an article expressing my displeasure with American Airlines‘ hideous online presence. I also spent some time mocking up a redesigned version of their website. To my surprise, the head of user experience at AA.com emailed me an amazing response describing some of the design problems faced in large corporations. You should read my original article here and the response from Mr. X here. An hour after I posted the response, American Airlines fired Mr. X.

One one hand, he violated his NDA, which is generally a bad thing and sometimes worth termination. On the other hand, the fact that what he said was even covered by an NDA is a bit absurd. The biggest secret he might have revealed was forthcoming transparency into fares and sales policies — and that’s only a shocking announcement if you often fly AA.

In any event, the firing of this guy is sure to hurt AA more than his post could have.