A CORRESPONDENT for a US newspaper who wrote a story claiming that a pilot on a domestic flight in Zimbabwe had to force open his cockpit door with an axe when he accidentally locked himself out, has said she was stupid in writing the false article. In a letter to Air Zimbabwe which followed the Chicago Tribune’s apology to the state airline, the writer identified by the independent Sunday Standard as Gaby Plattner said she did not write the article maliciously nor with intent to slander the airline. “I very stupidly wrote ‘Choppy Skies’ (title of article) as though it happened to me, when actually it was a story a passenger told me.” She said she was “completely shocked and mortified” when she discovered that the story was from a collection of travellers’ tales.