The FAA chief helped Delta retaliate against whistleblower rules

The decision supported Ms Petitt’s assertion that she had been selected for a special check to try to keep quiet about safety issues. Scott Morris, the judge who led the lengthy trial, ruled that Delta punished and discriminated against a federally protected whistleblower without any evidence to indicate that “her performance as a pilot was in any way deficient.” According to the decision, “no witnesses questioned the flight agreement.”

The ruling states that “in this case, the squeaky wheel did not receive grease.” Instead, she was “illegally discriminated against in the form of a career that defines” mental health assessment. Ms. Petitt has four decades of flight experience and a PhD in aviation safety. Many inside Delta saw that her safety concerns and warnings were valid and told her to inform managers about them, according to the decision, but at the same time other company officials identified her as a candidate for psychiatric evaluation.

Issued before Christmas, the ruling contains strong criticisms of Delta’s safety culture and warns more broadly against management’s use of mandatory psychological assessments “in order to achieve blind compliance by its pilots.”

A Delta spokesman said the carrier intended to appeal. In an e-mail, the company also said it denied that Ms. Petitt had been avenged for raising safety concerns, adding that “we took her safety concerns seriously and investigated them carefully.” Without detailing the details of the decision, Delta said it “has zero tolerance for retaliation in any form,” encourages voluntary safety reporting by employees, and offers “more ways for employees to do so.”

Mr Dickson’s involvement with Mrs Petitt and her case emerged as a major controversy during his confirmation in July 2019. He was not personally named as the target of the dispute.

Speaking for the FAA administrator, an agency spokesman said Mr. Dickson had only one meeting with Ms. Petitt while at Delta and instead allowed other company officials to handle complaints and subsequent referrals. for evaluation. The spokesman emphasized what Mr Dickson told the Senate Trade Committee during the 2019 confirmation hearings, including that there were “legitimate questions about her ability to fly” and that Delta’s dependence on psychiatric assessments was unpunished and discriminatory.

During his more than a decade as head of Delta flight operations before retiring and moving to the FAA, Mr. Dickson told lawmakers that individual piloting issues were addressed by an experienced team. , “And I had very little involvement in individual cases.” He also told the commission that he had given instructions “that the appropriate follow-up actions have been completed and that the contractual processes have been followed”.

The psychiatrist who gave the initial diagnosis, which Delta paid for, years later was forced by Illinois regulators to stop practicing medicine in part because of the inadequacies involving commercial pilot screening for the carrier. According to the contractual provisions between Delta and its pilots’ union, Ms. Petitt was sent to doctors at the Mayo Clinic and elsewhere for further evaluation. She and Delta shared the cost of these subsequent reviews, both rejecting the initial findings.

At the time of her diagnosis, the first psychiatrist did not refer to any letter of support for Ms. Petitt and, according to the ruling, did not interview anyone about Ms. Petitt, not even the doctor who over the years approved- he will hold her back. a commercial pilot license. The initial diagnosis also revealed her experiences years earlier – going to night school while helping her husband’s business and also raising three children under the age of three – suggested mania.

Ms. Petitt was returned to flight after almost two years and is currently the first officer on a wide-body Airbus A330 aircraft. But the judge agreed that the episode caused a “severe emotional impact” on the pilot. Ms Petitt brought an action under the status of aviation whistleblower, claiming that she had suffered financial damage and had damaged her professional reputation. The judge awarded him $ 500,000 in compensatory damages, along with repayment and other financial benefits. The decision also requires Delta to send each pilot a copy of the final order to discourage similar breaches by management, according to the judge, who said the publication of his order was “possibly embarrassing, but not cumbersome”.

The decision described Ms Petitt’s concerns as “cautious and reasonable”, including allegations such as chronic pilot fatigue, inadequate pilot training, falsification of training records and a lack of confidence on the part of some pilots to manually fly certain models of extreme aircraft. of automated.

In his filing, Mr. Dickson said Delta “sought the assistance of an external auditor” to analyze what he remembered about Ms. Petitt’s legitimate safety concerns before the company sent her for a psychiatric evaluation. .

The ruling considers Mr Dickson’s testimony in this case vague, evasive and “less than credible”. The judge wrote that Mr Dickson’s internal e-mails highlighted that Delta’s much-claimed “open door policy” for safety complaints “was not as open as it was portrayed” by the company. The FAA spokesman declined to comment.

Ms Petitt’s lawyer, Lee Seham, said his client declined to comment on fears of possible retaliation from the company. Mr Seham said the file showed that current and former senior Delta security officials, including Mr Dickson, had failed to specify how they had looked at Ms Petitt’s safety concerns.

Write to Andy Pasztor at [email protected]