Wow - some lawyer will likely bring a suit against the airline for improper dismissal. I assume the odds are at least 50%-50%.
How do we know the article was not fabricated by the writer? ...seems kinda dopey for him to make up stuff for an article; I don't see any financial gain that he could have gotten and, as someone observed earlier, this stuff does not seem to impact is ability to perform his job. If he put this stuff on a job application and it is not true, it might be different, I suppose.