At last , it's an win for her , She was victimized by the officials of Delta Air Lines, that has now settled the allegations by an employee Karlene Petitt who said the airline ordered her to undergo a psychiatric examination and barred her from flying in retaliation for raising safety concerns to company executives.
Karlene Petitt has been a pilot for over forty years , has a doctorate in Aviation Safety from Embry Riddle, been flying the Airbus A350 as latest Aircraft. On January 28 , 2016 ,she had submitted a 43-page safety report to Delta Senior Vice President of Flight Steven Dickson (Later FAA Administrator) and Vice President of Flying Operations Jim Graham.
The report had raised issues concerning: pilot fatigue, pilot training, pilot training records, and Delta’s failure to properly maintain its FAA-mandated Safety Management Systems (SMS) program.
Graham subsequently ordered Ms. Petitt to submit to psychiatric examination , a decision approved by Stephen Dickson. Prompted by its legal counsel Chris Puckett , Delta selected Dr. David B. Altman as the examiner, whom the judge characterized as “merely a tool used by Captain Graham to effectuate a management objective.”
Altman had received over $73,000 for his psychiatric report and relied on Ms. Petitt’s safety-related communications, provided to him by Delta, to diagnose her with “mania” and “grandiosity.” The Report on the diagnosis of bipolar disorder was subsequently rejected by both the Mayo Clinic and a third tie-breaker psychiatrist.
Altman testified that his adverse diagnosis was also driven in part by Ms. Petitt’s ability to raise children, assist her husband with his business, and attend night school, which he described as “well beyond what any woman I’ve ever met could do.”
While Judge Scott Morris characterized Ms. Petitt’s stated safety concerns as “prudent and reasonable,” he found that Captain Graham viewed her “tenacity in seeking clarification about her stated safety concerns as somehow problematic.”
However, the process dragged out over 21 months during which her very career , hanged in balance . Judge Morris had awarded Ms. Petitt compensatory damages of $500,000 – five times the highest previously recorded award under the whistleblower statute – in recognition of the “severe emotional toll this placed on her wellbeing.”
In a latest development , the settlement approved Friday by Labor Department administrative law judge Scott Morris in New Jersey ends a long-running dispute in which a federal arbiter agreed with many of the pilot's claims and said Delta failed to show any faults in her flying ability.
The decision dated December 21, 2020, federal Administrative Law Judge Scott R. Morris found Delta Air Lines, Inc. guilty of having used a compulsory psychiatric examination as a “weapon” against Dr. Karlene Petitt after she raised safety issues related to the airline’s flight operations.
Terms of the settlement were confidential, although the pilot's law firm said they were "consistent with" the arbiter's 2020 ruling , which said Karlene Petitt deserved to get $500,000 in compensation for damage to her career.
Petitt , who lives in Seattle Washington with her husband and has three grown daughters and 8 grandchildren , pressed her case under a 2000 law designed to protect whistleblowers who report issues of aviation safety.
Karlene Petitt is the Author of "Flight To Success".
When Federal safety regulators looked into Petitt's allegations, they determined that Delta was not counting time that pilots spent commuting by air to flights toward their maximum work day.
In 2019, the case delayed a vote on the nomination of Delta executive Stephen Dickson to lead the FAA. Dickson had authorized grounding Petitt for a psychiatric evaluation. Senate Democrats said the allegations raised questions about Delta's safety culture and Dickson's candor because he did not mention the case in a questionnaire that asked if he were involved in any legal proceedings.
At that time , Senate committee Chairman Roger Wicker, R-Miss., said the committee conducted an "extensive review" after it learned of the whistleblower case and found that Dickson wasn't named in any lawsuits or administrative proceedings and was not accused of retaliating against employees who raised safety concerns. He said the committee studied hundreds of pages of legal documents.
As Judge Morris held :
“it is improper for Delta airlines to weaponize this process for the purposes of obtaining blind compliance by its pilots due to fear that Delta can ruin their career by such cavalier use of this tool of last resort.”
Judge Morris quoted findings of Dr. Steinkraus of the Mayo Clinic with respect to the diagnosis of Ms. Petitt:
“This has been a puzzle for our group – the evidence does not support presence of a psychiatric diagnosis but does support an organizational/corporate effort to remove this pilot from the rolls. … years ago in the military, it was not unusual for female pilots and air crew to be the target for such an effort.”
Pictures Courtesy : Karlene Petitt.
