Woman Sucked Out of Airplane

Dec. 15 -- A woman was apparently sucked out of an airborne corporate plane as the passenger in front of her made a desperate attempt to save her — and pilots didn’t know it until they reached they landed.

FBI agents investigating a woman’s 2,000-foot fall Thursday night have ruled out foul play and are treating it as an accident or a suicide. The passenger who tried to save her felt a strange sensation, turned around, and saw the woman being sucked out an open emergency exit door, agent Andy Black said. With other passengers watching, the man held on to her as long as he could, but finally had to let go to avoid being sucked out as well.

The co-pilot emerged from the cockpit and quickly closed the door to keep the other passengers out of danger. The man who tried to save the woman and other passengers tried to tell the co-pilot what had happened, but he did not hear them because of the loud whooshing sound generated by the open plane door and the chaos of the situation.

“It’s a very dangerous situation when a door flies open in a moving plane,” said Black. “The co-pilot came to the back of the plane and immediately secured the door so that no one else would be in danger. What happened was that the other passengers tried to tell him he lost a passenger, but in the confusion of the situation and the loud noise of the wind rushing into the plane, he apparently didn’t hear them.”

The pilots did not realize they had lost a passenger until the plane landed at San Jose International Airport at 6:05 p.m. Based on the accounts of the male passenger and others who saw the woman fall out of the plane, Black said, murder has been ruled out. Keeping in mind the woman’s plunge could have been an accident, Black said investigators are considering the possibility it could have been a suicide.

“It’s a very possible,” Black said. “This is a bizarre case that just keeps getting more bizarre.”