Silenced no More: Whistleblowing Delta Pilot Retires, Speaks out
EXCLUSIVE: After a stellar career, Karlene Petitt fights for change and tells all about safety issues and sleazy behavior by Delta Air Lines management
Karlene Petitt has led a remarkable life. The now-retired Delta captain followed her dreams into the skies, wrote nine books, earned two masters degrees and a PhD in aviation, and raised three children with her husband, to name but a few of her accomplishments.
To most of us, that’s the resume of a gifted, motivated, and disciplined individual.
But to a psychiatrist hired by Delta to examine Petitt after she alerted superiors about safety issues at the airline, her brand of energy and focus is “well beyond normal” and—wait for it—a sign of mental illness.
No human woman could get all that done unless she was manic, according to Dr. David Altman. In 2016 he diagnosed Petitt with bipolar disorder, which grounded her for being mentally unfit to fly and threatened her future as a pilot.
“I don’t know any woman who could do that,” Altman, who’s since forfeited his medical license to avoid charges for alleged wrongdoing, observed in an actual recorded hearing about Petitt’s case where people living in the 21st century were listening. “I don’t know any woman with three under three that isn’t exhausted, let alone going to school.”
He added of Petitt’s success, “that’s well beyond what any woman I’ve ever met could do,” begging the question that perhaps he needs to meet more women?
Petitt hired her own panel of doctors who disputed Altman’s finding, fought Delta for years, and won.
This Substack has shared some laughable quotes from airline management, consultants and male pilots that are beyond parody, and the above are certainly among The Landing’s all-time greatest hits.
Here’s how we got to this place.
Lessons for Other Women in the Industry
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.”
Petitt’s full story, including the myriad safety concerns she still has about Delta (which include pilot fatigue and falsification of training records), can be found on her website, in documents online, and via links at the bottom of this story. I’ve also embedded the 115-page decision below:
Petitt and I talked about the sheer volume of women across the aviation industry who have come forward, sued, or confidentially shared their stories of abuse in the workplace with her, with me, or in private social media groups. The examples are endless.
Women who speak up are subjected to psychiatric evaluations and defamation with loaded sexist language like “hysterical,” “emotional” or “paranoid.”
Women are punished for being harassed and raped by pilots.
Women are retaliated against for reporting their attacks and harassment.
At Delta alone, there are at least two women currently suing for sexual harassment and retaliation, among other charges.
Andrea Ratfield, a pilot, and another woman who was a flight attendant were each sexually assaulted by Delta pilots in separate incidents—and, in a now familiar refrain, were both retaliated against for reporting their assaults, according to court documents, which also mention the abuse of psych evals (I’ll be covering this at length in a future post).
Their suit* contains a quote that earns an instant spot among The Landing’s all-time greatest hits:
“In a 2020 recorded voicemail message from a male Delta pilot to a female flight attendant inquiring about becoming a pilot, the pilot professed that the woman ‘would make a better flight attendant than a pilot’ and that ‘women should not be in the cockpit unless they are giving a blowjob.’”
VIDEO: A peek at CEO Ed Bastian’s testimony in Petitt’s case. From the comment section: “How can you be CEO of an airline and not at least know what a QRH is!”
Karlene Petitt knows well what women in the aviation industry go through, and I asked her what she wanted to share with employees who fear retaliation.
“I want women to know there are people out there who can help you,” she told me. “Don’t be afraid to speak the truth. Don’t live in silence.
“If things are going on, if the company is doing something to you, take notes. Don’t be afraid, if you’re going to speak out, to put it in writing. Document it, write to your manager, copy someone on it so it’s well documented. At the end of the day it’s he said, she said, and if no one’s doing anything with it, you’re more protected this way.”
Indeed, the emails flying around in Petitt’s case provide a rare look inside the sleazy machinations by Delta executives trying to discredit her.
As a judge in her case wrote, “the evidence suggests [Delta’s] manipulation of a process to achieve a desired outcome. The two key actors involved here are [Capt. Jim Graham, Vice President, Flight Operations and Delta attorney Christopher Puckett]. They were the parties moving the pieces in the chess game in which [Petitt] found herself an unwitting player.”
Petitt also advises women thinking of speaking out to “Be very leery of HR. It’s there to create a defense and support the company when they want to get rid of you. Keep your eyes open.
“At Delta, when women, pilots, FAs meet with HR, we’re not allowed to record anything or have representation,” Petitt cautions. “In my case, the woman I met with [Kelly Nabors] misrepresented everything that occurred, I had no one there to say ‘no, she’s wrong.’ I couldn’t record it. If anyone finds themselves in a meeting as such, take notes yourself, go home and write them up, then send them in an email saying ‘thank you for meeting with me, I’d like to clarify points we covered’ so you have a paper trail.”
Petitt also knows all about the ubiquitous assumption that settling a case with an airline necessarily means silencing you with a nondisclosure agreement.
Before you agree to sign away your lifelong right to tell your own story, “Do a soul searching,” Petitt advises. “They really need to decide what their life will look like in ten years or twenty years. Nobody has to sign an NDA. Nobody does. You don’t have to. I don’t say that because I want to make women feel bad because they [signed one], but if we do, [our story] goes away.”
(That last point is important: We talk often here about signing NDAs—not to shame or criticize anyone who’s already signed one, but to educate those who still have a choice to make. Each victim must do what is best for them).
The Weaponizing of Psychiatric Evaluations in Aviation
Petitt can share everything she knows now she’s free from the strict rules commercial carriers generally have about employees speaking publicly, whether to the media, on social media, or on their own platforms.
She’s writing a nonfiction book about everything that happened over those six-plus years, including updates about the ongoing safety problems that concern her, and the continued use of psych evals as a weapon against pilots and flight attendants who speak out.
Petitt’s case never should have had a gender element to it, but of course, with so few women in power at commercial airlines, it usually comes into play.
As most of you know, The Landing is not an aviation newsletter. Rather, I am here to cover stories of human interest, crime, and women’s issues within that industry.
In Petitt’s case, the sexism and misogyny notably reared their heads with what I will call the Crying Claim. In a three-hour meeting in a Seattle-area hotel lobby in 2016 with Kelly Nabors, then a manager of equal opportunity and pass protection at Delta, Petitt discussed her safety report. Nabors understood very little of it, because she was not a safety investigator as Petitt believed at the time.
Unbeknownst to Petitt, Nabors later told Delta management Petitt cried for the full three hours. In public. In a hotel lobby near the airport. Using crying to discredit a woman is as sexist and discriminatory as it gets, especially when the claims are made up.
What actually happened, Petitt tells me, is this:
“Kelly reached over, touched my arm and said in the most compassionate way, ‘This must be horrible. We’re going to get to the bottom of it.’ I could feel my eyes getting moist. She had a box of tissues and shoves it across the table, and it kind of jolted me out of it.” Petitt says the move was so oddly abrupt that she exchanged glances with another woman in the lobby who noticed it.
Later, those who know Petitt, including a Delta pilot, testified they’d never seen her cry, even with extremely stressful news about her mental fitness she continued receiving at work.
Do we have to wonder if they’d try that BS with a male pilot? No, we don’t, because there is zero chance they would.
The tribunal in Petitt’s case didn’t buy Nabors’ Crying Claim for a hot second and repeatedly questioned her credibility. They found Petitt “did not become overly emotional,” questioned the “accuracy and veracity” of Nabors’ testimony, and reiterated Petitt was credible.
But the damage was done at the time of the Crying Claim, and Petitt had a longer, harder fight ahead of her because of it.
“Delta refused to tell me why I was pulled,” Petitt says of the months after the meeting. “Had I known why I was pulled I would’ve gone down to the hotel lobby we were working in and we could’ve pulled the video. I didn’t find out until nine months later why they pulled me. I found out in my medical report.”
By that time, the Section 15 was barrelling down on her. The abuse of this very important process is so widespread it could fill a book, and I’m aiming to write a post on the topic in the future.
Most recently, I covered powerhouse Southwest Airlines Capt. Christine Janning’s case, which includes weaponizing the psychiatric evaluation process with a letter seen by many of her colleagues that claimed “Janning was mentally unstable and incapable of being trusted with an aircraft.” Her lawyers say this is patently false and she’s suing for slander, among other charges.
There is the dauntless former American Airlines flight attendant Greta Anderson, who “was referred for a series of psychiatric evaluations over…eight years, all of which found her fit to work, while she spoke out publicly about safety problems posed by combative airline passengers. After an incident in which…the pilot raised a fist to her…the company referred her to another psychiatrist, who found her unstable.” Anderson sued American and won a $1.24 million settlement (See her terrifying story in this article):
Parting Thoughts—and an Action Plan
I asked Petitt, who now serves as a safety consultant for aviation manufacturers, what she’s most proud of during her decades as a commercial airline pilot.
“It’s a huge accomplishment having a career as a mother,” says Petitt, who has three grown children and eight grandchildren. And, she adds, “I have eight type ratings.” (She holds an ATP certificate with type ratings in the Boeing 727, 737, 757, 767, 747-200, 747-400, 777 and Airbus A330).
She’s also proud of “continuing my education and giving back to the industry,” she says. “I’ve always been doing something for the airline, writing, training, leaving my mark. If you train 2,000 pilots and you’ve given them some tips and skills, you’ve impacted safety somewhere.”
She’s not finished standing up for what’s right, and she says with a bit of melancholy in her voice, “We haven’t changed anything. I wanted the CEO investigated. People should’ve been fired.” (Spoiler alert: they weren’t).
Petitt sued David Altman for fraud, and a judge dismissed her case, so on Feb. 17 she filed a motion to reconsider.
Another action point: Petitt has started a petition to change the rules for so-called “whistleblowers.” She says there are numerous flaws in the current statute, including the nickname itself.
“References to the AIR21 statute should be changed to the ‘Safety Advocate Law,’” she argues, because the “Whistleblower Law” has a “negative connotation similar an informant or snitch, which undermines the statutory intent of encouraging employees to come forward to improve safety.”
She did win, though, I reminded her. And Delta paid.
For a little light relief, Petitt this week posted a video of her attorney Lee Seham roasting Delta CEO Ed Bastian with an acoustic satire to the tune of Sam Cooke’s “What a Wondeful World.” (Warning: May get stuck in your head).
*Their cases have since been split, and I’ll be covering both in-depth in a future post.
Further Reading
Sign Karlene’s petition.
Visit Karlene Petitt’s blog and her Amazon page to purchase all her books.
Another article detailing Karlene’s winning case against Delta and the safety concerns she brought to the airline’s attention.
Read more about former flight attendant Greta Anderson’s groundbreaking, winning suit against American Airlines.
A CNN article about Altman’s previous alleged threats to another Delta pilot.
About me
I’m an award-winning journalist and author of the #1 bestselling book The Strong Ones, the true story of a groundbreaking 7-month U.S. Army women’s strength study and its long-term impact on women in the military.
The Landing was born after I wrote a lengthy investigative series and personal defense of American Airlines First Officer Sten Molin, the pilot of tragic flight 587 and a friend of mine in the late 1990s. Starting in late 2021, dozens of women, most of them flight attendants, came forward to re-educate me and my readers about Molin’s double life as a serial rapist, harasser, stalker and predator of underage girls, some of whom reported him to American, which allegedly did nothing to stop him. As a direct result of their response to my stories, sources say American offered settlements to most of his victims in return for nondisclosure agreements.
My reporting has appeared in national and international publications including U.S. News & World Report, Newsweek, The Sunday Times Magazine (UK), People, Glamour, Shape and more. I contributed to the feminist anthology Letters of Intent along with such icons as Judy Blume, Ntozake Shange and Gloria Steinem. Perhaps best known for my viral resignation letter from People magazine, I covered high-profile crime stories for them across Europe and the U.S. including the Amanda Knox case in Italy, the disappearance of Madeline McCann in Portugal, and the tragic school shooting in Sandy Hook, Connecticut. I am the author of two mystery novels: The Underdogs and Famous Last Words.
So sad to know Delta perpetuates a low bar for aviation safety instead of making processes safer for pilots and going after the other Sten Molins that rape & harrass women. This is not how an airline is run. I would prosecute the Delta executives for negligence. If this was my airline, I would swiftly fire and sue those executives and anybody else perpetuating a low bar for aviation safety and creating a hostile work environment.
I wish I could say that the female HR person gaslighting Karlene was the exception in corporate America, but it is the norm. It happens on Wall Street and in tech all of the time. I just expressed my unhappiness with Delta (as a platinum member) on how they treat female pilots (moody, tempermental, blah, blah).
Thanks for bringing visibility.