People usually don't want to part with "matters of the heart".

And Christoph Debus, CFO of the holiday airline Condor, put it this way: he said goodbye to his "affairs close to the heart" at the airline at the end of February.

But that says little about his move to Flixmobility with the Flixbus network and the Flixtrain competing trains to Deutsche Bahn.

Timo Kotowski

Editor in Business.

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Rather, it explains why he once again became financial manager of Condor in 2019 - in a phase of great need, since its parent company Thomas Cook had just collapsed and the holiday flight provider went into insolvency-like protective shield proceedings.

Other managers would probably have despised the vacated crisis position.

But the 50-year-old Debus did not take long to be asked - also because of old ties.

Because from 2005 to 2009 he was the master of the Condor numbers.

Some people at the airline wished it was different

Two and a half years after his return, Condor has a new majority shareholder in the financial investor Attestor, 16 new Airbus A330neo long-haul aircraft have been ordered and there are high hopes that the holiday business will recover after the Corona lull in the summer.

Debus, who played a key role in Attestor's entry, would now have had the chance to experience normality instead of crisis.

That might not have been enough of a challenge, but he will no longer be on board when the first new A330 planes arrive in the fall.

Debus stuck to his original plan that Condor was only a way station.

There are likely to be quite a few in the airline who would have wished things to be different.

Speculations circulated that Debus was almost a natural successor to Condor boss Ralf Teckentrup.

The two are considered to be an extremely harmonious duo – the spirited and sometimes sharp-tongued boss and the always friendly, profound analyst.

Together they had brought Condor back on course for the future before.

But there's more to the mobility world than airplanes, and Flixmobility is considered a candidate for an IPO.

Debus was quoted as saying he was happy to help shape "the future of such a visionary, sustainable and up-and-coming company".

Condor now has to find a new financial manager in the short term and a new boss in the medium term.

The search for the finance manager is said to be well advanced and will be completed shortly.

There is still some time left for the chief post.

Teckentrup has extended his contract until the end of 2023.

He will then be 66 years old and have been in office for around 20 years – longer than almost all other airline bosses.

In phases of upheaval, Debus was always there as a successful crisis manager.

Setbacks were followed by patiently working his way out of the valley – a talent that can be attributed to the graduate industrial engineer.

In his first Condor period, Arcandor Thomas Cook was created in its last form under the umbrella of the then Karstadt parent company, while Deutsche Lufthansa gave up its stake in Condor at the same time.

A merging of Condor and Air Berlin failed due to concerns of the Federal Cartel Office.

The holiday airline had to assert itself on the German market without an airline partner.

In his second Condor period, Debus then became involved as a master builder himself.

Boss Teckentrup publicly credited him with the praise for the investor solution found with Attestor.