Delta Airlines bribed doctor $74,000 to declare pilot mentally ill for reporting safety problems. [View all]

[DetlefK]

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/10/29/2131793/-Delta-paid-a-doctor-to-declare-a-pilot-mentally-ill-after-she-spoke-up-She-just-won-big-in-court

Since she was at the time, in 2015, working on a Ph.D. in aviation safety, she had real expertise even beyond her decades of flying commercial jets. In early 2016, she gave her bosses a report on safety problems she’d witnessed, Dominic Gates reports at The Seattle Times.

In response, top Delta executives had Petitt diagnosed with a mental illness to prevent her from flying.

“We should consider whether a Section 15 is appropriate,” Jim Graham, then Delta’s vice president of flight operations, wrote to a pilot manager, using the terminology for a process that would deem Petitt too mentally ill to pilot planes. “If she cannot embrace and understand the reasons behind our actions, it stands to reason she might not be able to make appropriate decisions for the safe operation of a flight.”

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Dr. David Altman, the doctor Delta hired to assess Petitt, was paid $74,000 and came up with a bipolar disorder diagnosis on exquisitely sexist grounds: Petitt was doing so much with her life—the job, the kids, the degrees, the books—“well beyond what any woman I’ve ever met could do,” according to Altman, so she must be manic.

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In 2020, Altman gave up his medical license rather than face charges over his diagnosis of Petitt. That’s how corrupt this was.

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Even after the final settlement, with Administrative Law Judge Scott Morris calling it “improper for [Delta] to weaponize this process for the purposes of obtaining blind compliance by its pilots,” Delta refused to admit any wrongdoing.

“We made a business decision to settle the matter rather than appeal a decision that we disagreed with,” spokesperson Catherine Morrow wrote in an email to The Seattle Times. “Delta’s fitness for duty testing process for pilots is in place to ensure safety, and it works.” But Delta’s pilots will have a chance to learn the truth: Morris ordered copies of his decision posted at every Delta pilot base, in addition to the $500,000 plus legal fees the airline will have to pay Petitt.