Karlene Petitt's Thrilling Second Life
Happy publication week to an aviation legend* and prolific writer!
The aviation industry is a small world. I’m wondering if you can guess who all the witnesses are in “Flight For Justice” simply by their testimony. Yes...I kept the dialogue verbatim from the trial, and just captured enough for the story to unfold.
—Ret. Delta Pilot Karlene Petitt on her latest thriller FLIGHT FOR JUSTICE
When Karlene Petitt sent this teaser to me during one of our email chats about her new aviation thriller, I was in.
This week we’re sending congratulations for the publication of her brand-new novel FLIGHT FOR JUSTICE, the seventh book in her “Flight For” series. Happy pub week, Karlene!
Let’s get straight to the important part:
Buy FLIGHT FOR JUSTICE here (available in Kindle/eBook, paperback or hardcover).
If you’re a Kindle Unlimited member, download it and read it—authors get paid by the page read in this program. I already got mine!
You can get an autographed hardcover directly from her website, where she keeps her prices lower than Amazon, including shipping.
If you don’t know Karlene by now, she’s a super-nice woman who doesn’t take any crap. You might know her as the pilot who took Delta Air Lines to the cleaners ** when they came for her.
On any given day, you’ll find her on Twitter,*** LinkedIn, in the comments here, or on her blog calling out shady airline behavior and trolling their executives like a pro (read on for that time Delta CEO Ed Bastian failed to honor a bid to a cancer charity). Not to mention how much time Karlene spends advising and advocating for other victims.
This retired Delta pilot is, in two words, a whistleblowing badass.
She’s also a successful author, and her most enduring series is Flight For…, which she calls “aviation thrillers that read like a mystery that eventually merge into a flavor of aviation legal thrillers.”
Read her books because they’re clever, original and gripping. Buy them for your friends and family, too. If Karlene’s helped you—I can’t tell you how many airline industry people write into me, to her, to others we know looking for guidance, advice and an empathetic ear for the trash way they’re treated at work, and she assists whenever she can—there are ways to give back.
The best way to help any author is to buy their books, share links to buy them, TELL YOUR FRIENDS, and review, review, review at the Amazon link above and on her book’s page on Goodreads. Every review helps boost the book in the algorithm and keeps it in front of prospective readers’ eyes.
About FLIGHT FOR JUSTICE
Based on true events. The trial is nothing but a distraction. There is no safety without justice, and Darby, Kathryn, and the gals are back, fighting the villains of Global Air Lines. Bill Jacobs is released from prison and the game changes. The stakes increase when Covid is unleashed on world. Darby's fight is one for the integrity of the pilot profession and the safety of passengers, but little does she know how deep the corruption runs within the FAA and Global. Will she survive? Twists and turns you will never expect in this fight for justice. The 7th in the flight for series.
Karlene’s novels are what we call “faction,” which is what it sounds like—officially fiction, but with a vein of true-life running through it. (My novel Famous Last Words, about my years as a celebrity journalist, is also faction). In Karlene’s case, the true-life inspiration is, of course, her exciting life as an aviator—and the bitter taste of Delta’s betrayal.
Karlene tells me she’s written the series so each book is a gripping stand-alone read, but to get the full narrative arc of main characters Kathryn and Darby, she says, “If they pick this up first...They must go back and start at book one, Flight For Control, and follow the series.”
Read more about the latest installment, its inspiration, the Easter eggs in it, and, for insiders, how to guess who’s who in her mostly-true book in her blog post announcing the book.
Her Story
I interviewed Petitt days after she left Delta, and like most of the women in the airline industry I’ve spoken with since launching The Landing, she described a bittersweet relationship with her job.
The bitter side came in the form of a protracted legal battle with her employer starting in 2015, when Petitt alerted Delta bosses to safety issues at the airline and was promptly subjected to a Section 15—a career-threatening process that can label pilots too mentally unstable to fly.
Her PhD dissertation was on aviation safety culture, but instead of taking her well-articulated concerns seriously, Delta wielded the dreaded psychiatric evaluation to silence her. She filed a whistleblower complaint, and the airline fought her. More than six years later, she won.
In his decision granting Petitt legal fees and $500,000 in compensation, Administrative Law Judge Scott Morris wrote of Section 15, “it is improper for [Delta] 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.”
The entire experience took its toll, but it’s not over yet…
Twists and turns you will never expect are found in this fight for justice. This is the 7th in the Flight For series. And the very unexpected ending, leads to the next in the series: Flight For Revenge. Be ready!—Karlene Petitt
That Ed Bastian Anecdote
Like any of us who take a stand using our real names (operative phrase: “real names”) online, we get a lot of pushback, mostly from cowardly anonymous trolls.
Karlene handles it with humor and aplomb, and never holds back when revealing truths the airlines would rather you not know or pay attention to.
I did a spit-take observing her on Twitter recently. A man purporting to be “subject matter expert” (um..what?) was arguing with her and one particularly pathetic comeback was,
“Maybe you just couldn’t cut it as an #airline pilot?”
Said to a woman who’s typed A350, B777, A330, B747, 747-400, 757, 767, 737, 727.
Anyway, when Karlene recently posted a letter showing her $1,630 winning bid to the American Cancer Society for lunch with Delta CEO Ed Bastian, she had some Twitter followers chime in.
“So he stiffed the Cancer Society after promising them an hour of his time? Did he pay them the money to refund you?” asked one aghast Twitter follower.
Karlene replied, “Yes. less than 24 hours after I wrote… there was a FedEx check on my door. Fastest refund ever after waiting well over a year trying to get that lunch.”
Until next time…
-Sara
* If Lauren Sanchez and John Travolta are “Living Legends of Aviation,” you better know Karlene Petitt is.
**She will tell you that no one was held accountable and nothing changed at Delta and that’s disheartening. But she fought hard, and her victories are inspirational to the rest of us nonetheless.
***No, I’m not calling it X. I deactivated my account months ago. It’s gross.
Sara, thank you so much for this awesome post, sharing my novel and downloading a copy! I am so looking forward to your comments on Amazon too! And all your readers comments! I have to admit, I she a couple tears in some of the chapters as I wrote. My hubby cried in another area for an entirely different reason. I suppose if you life drama and have experienced love and loss, that the emotional chord is touched. Remember... sometimes the ending is just the beginning.
I am going to search Amazon for this book. I like whistleblowing badasses.