What Goes on in the Cockpit

A long time ago, when I was still writing feature stories for Yankee, I interviewed a pilot for one of the major airlines. I forget how I found this guy, but he was willing to talk to me, so I visited his home in Connecticut. We sat at his kitchen table, and he started telling me stories -- the kind of stories, as my editor said later, that pilots usually only tell other pilots.
     He told me about two pilots who got into a fistfight in midflight. He recalled one pilot who was famous for consistently making too low an approach to a certain New England airport. It got so bad that other pilots with experience refused to fly with him. One day he approached the airport even lower than usual and flew his loaded airliner into the ocean.
     The most amazing story of all was about an entire flight crew that fell asleep. The plane’s destination was Los Angeles but it was headed right out over the Pacific Ocean before frantic ground controllers found a way to trigger a fire alarm on the flight deck to wake the pilots. ‘They hushed it up,’ he added.
     I wrote a dandy story and, as was my custom in those days, sent the pilot a copy before publishing it to make sure I had the facts right. He called me right back. ‘If you print that story, I’ll lose my job,’ he said.  I checked with my editor, and we decided not to print the story. Three years later, the story of the sleeping crew surfaced in The New York Times.
     Sometimes I feel like that pilot. I could tell you some amazing stories, but if I did, I might lose my job. I’m only half a journalist. My other half is a teacher, who has legal and ethical limits on how much I can say about my students.
     My two halves are constantly fighting with each other. I know a student whose story is so inspiring it would bring tears to your eyes. But if I told it as well as that student tells it, using details that make you taste and smell and feel the terror of abuse, a couple dozen people would instantly recognize the child. I don’t think the student would mind, but that student is a minor. I’d have to seek the permission of the parent -- who is not the abuser -- and I don’t see that happening.
     Some writers in my situation have relied on composites -- putting together parts of the stories of many people to create one -- but that approach, while preserving the privacy of the students and their families, is a flat violation of journalistic ethics. A Washington Post reporter was stripped of a Pulitzer Prize for it. 
     Well, people ask me, why not just write about good students? Aren’t the majority of students at ConVal smart and funny and kind and respectful? They are, and I do write about them. But every teacher knows that they are not the students who monopolize your time and attention. They are not the students who send you home at night wondering why you ever decided to be an educator. They are not the students teachers only talk about with other teachers.
     Why, one teacher I know told me about a student who did something so outrageous that she -- but I can’t go on. Somebody might figure out who it is.
     So I can’t really tell you about the everyday dramas that happen in this school. Maybe that’s best. Maybe the passengers shouldn’t know everything that goes on in the cockpit.