[deanmine]

This is the transcript of an extraordinary 911 call made by a mechanic of a private airline to the San Jose (Calif.) police communication center on Dec. 14, 2000.

The dispatcher is Irene Donovan, and the caller is Ron Van Meir, a mechanic with Hewlett-Packard's Aviation Department, which operated the airline for the electronics company.

Dispatcher: San Jose police.

Caller: Yes, ma'am. This is Ron Van Meir with Hewlett-Packard's Aviation Department.

D: Uh-huh.

C: Um. I don't know how to do or who to really report this to. Um. But we lost a passenger in flight of our scheduled flight from Lincoln, California, to San Jose.

D: You lost a passenger?

C: They fell out of the airplane.

D: They what?

C: They fell. Well, they either . . . They fell out of the airplane.

D: Are you being funny?

C: No ma'am. No. I'm dead serious. OK. I mean . . . I'm one of the aircraft mechanics that work here, and I don't want to say it was suicide because I can't assume that. But we did lose a passenger in flight.

D: How did they get out of their airplane?

C: OK. Um. There's emergency exits, and she went out one of the emergency doors.

D: Where are you calling from now?

C: OK. The hangar here at 1210 Aviation Avenue. I know we have airport security, but I can't find one of their phone numbers so I started with 911. But I figured we got to get something going.

D: Where did this happen?

C: Um. It would have been out of Sacramento Executive Airport. Um. Probably 2 or 3 minutes into the flight.

D: Which left Sacramento when?

C: Um. I'd have to get one of the pilots. It would be shortly after 5:30. The aircraft arrived here at just before, a little after six.

D: And this is a private plane?

C: It's a company-owned airplane. It's a corporate aircraft.

D: And it landed at five after six.

C: Um. Yeah. Approximately 6 o'clock. Five after six.

D: And one of the passengers that was originally on it is no longer on it.

C: Yes ma'am.

D: How many passengers were on it?

C: Um. I'd have to look at the manifest. It was probably about five.

D: Where are they?

C: Um. I'm not sure yet. But I mean . . . the director of maintenance or the department manager was talking to all of them, and I've been talking --

D: They're all in the same place right now? Somebody's got them all confined? I mean, nobody's going home?

C: I don't know that. I can check. I'm talking to the one guy that's running the department, and I said ``you know, we need to notify somebody,'' and so he just told me to handle it so this is the first call that. (Several seconds of silence) See, and the two flight crew members weren't notified until after they landed.

D: How could they not see somebody or feel -- ?

C: This airplane is a Twin Otter. The door had came open. They had a indication, he went back there and closed the door.

D: Oh, it did come open while he was in flight?

C: The passengers that were there didn't tell the pilot until after they had landed.

D: They saw her jump?

C: Well, I don't want to say jumped. She left the airplane.

D: She leaves the airplane. They see her leave the airplane while it's in the air but they decide not to tell?

C: Ma'am. You'd have to talk to them. I haven't talked to them at all. From what the one pilot told me was she was there, the one guy saw that she was there, he reached out to grab her and -- she had -- you know. He couldn't.

D: All right. What's your name?

C: My name? Is Ron.

D: OK. Stay put and keep everybody there. Don't let anybody go home.

C: OK.

D: OK.

[Arkoquisa]

needs more, if you have.

[MrCorpse]

So what was the outcome? Can't just give this without the rest of the story!!

[deanmine]

it was a suicide i guess...

Excerpt from San Jose Mercury News:
:
: In the air and on the ground, passengers at several points thought they had sufficiently conveyed the information to the plane's crew, Holmberg said. But the pilots' reaction was muted.

Once at the airport, the four passengers lingered and eventually asked whether they should wait to make a report.

The pilots, who seemed to be ``in control,'' said that wasn't necessary and told them to go home. Two passengers did.

[Arkoquisa]

I'm just trying to imagine the voices on the phone, and how you would have to go about reporting such a thing.

[deanmine]

Excerpt from San Jose Mercury News:
In the air and on the ground, passengers at several points thought they had sufficiently conveyed the information to the plane's crew, Holmberg said. But the pilots' reaction was muted.

Once at the airport, the four passengers lingered and eventually asked whether they should wait to make a report.
The pilots, who seemed to be ``in control,'' said that wasn't necessary and told them to go home. Two passengers did.
The others stuck around to ``forcibly'' explain what happened. When it finally sank in, the pilots were visibly stunned and asked a mechanic to call 911. The mechanic himself struggled to convey what happened to a 911 dispatcher.

In hindsight, Holmberg said he believes the pilots thought the passengers were trying to say a woman had missed her connection or that they had wanted to report problems with the door.

Wyatt, of the coroner's office, said that investigators had found no suicide note, but that the victim's husband told them she had been depressed because of job stress.

Sources also said Otto had been advised to seek counseling because she was having a hard time adjusting to life in the United States. She and her husband, who were newlyweds, had moved from Germany a few months ago. Also, officials said, Michael Otto was particularly worried the day of his wife's death. Officials would not elaborate.

Michael Otto, according to San Jose police and fire officials, was waiting at the airport when the plane touched down, growing more anxious every minute he wasn't told where his wife was. When somebody finally gave him the bad news, the man started to hyperventilate and his hands went numb.
``He was breathing too fast, and he went numb,'' said Greg Spence, of the San Jose Fire Department. ``Everything was so convoluted, he became more upset and more excited.''

San Jose dispatcher Irene Donovan even had a hard time understanding what had happened.
Donovan, a dispatcher for 25 years, said it took her several seconds into the
approximately 4-minute conversation to realize what the caller was trying to report. It took her longer to realize it wasn't a prank.
``My first thought was this is someone playing a trick,'' said Donovan. ``His calm demeanor played against what he was telling me, and throughout the conversation, the answers he gave me to my questions were off the wall too.''

She said she initially thought the caller -- Ron Van Meir -- was trying to make a missing persons report on a passenger who got lost after getting off a plane. Then, just as she thought she was beginning to understand, the story got more confusing.
It just didn't seem believable.''

Along with Otto's husband, and HP's Chief Executive Carly Fiorina, some passengers,
including Holmberg, stayed late that night at the Jet Center at San Jose International Airport waiting for news.

``We were hoping for a miracle, that she landed in a soft place,'' Holmberg said. Allen, the passenger who had hold of Elisabeth Otto's shoulder before her fall, was still having a hard time with what happened, his wife, Melissa, said. ``We're just not very comfortable talking about this. It's really hard, and I don't know if he'll ever feel like talking about what happened.''

A neighbor of the Allens, Lisa Jensen, said Jeffrey Allen was in the midst of transferring from HP in San Jose to Roseville and probably hadn't been taking this commuter plane for longer than a couple of weeks. He was waiting for final paperwork to go through and had put his home up for sale.

``You just never know what you're going to do in that situation,'' Jensen said. ``But it doesn't surprise me he did what he did. He is an extremely nice and generous person.'' Little else is known about Elisabeth Otto.

In October, she and her husband, who were married last summer, quickly settled into their San Francisco life.

They landed their Pacific Heights apartment with the help of Hewlett-Packard, which signed a three-year lease, according to the landlord. The plan was for Elisabeth to train in the Bay Area for three years, then return to an HP job in Germany. Michael Otto is not an HP employee, the company said.

The couple paid $3,500 a month and had a window view of the Golden Gate Bridge. At night, after work, they went to the gym, said neighbors, and Elisabeth Otto seemed friendly, always offering a smile. When a neighbor -- who described Otto as strong-looking -- joked about the German exercise ethic, she laughed.

[Arkoquisa]

Well then!

Can you imagine wresting her as she is trying to jump, and how you know you would not be able to stop looking as she fell.

All the while thinking, "FUCK! How am I going to get pics for DR?"

Awesome thread, airplanes are amazing.

[ocrage]

i wonder if they ever found the body or if it hit concrete and exploded

[deanmine]

Passenger's Fall Shocks Plane Firm
FBI says H-P worker not a victim of foul play

Sunday, December 17, 2000 Opening the emergency door of a twin-propeller plane in flight is such a difficult task that Alan Stephen, president of Twin Otter International, believed it impossible -- until he learned an apparently distraught Hewlett- Packard employee had done it.

"When I first was given the news release . . . I thought it was a joke. I still can't believe it happened," said Stephen, head of the Las Vegas company that leased the plane to Palo Alto-based Hewlett-Packard.

Stephen said Friday his company has leased a DeHavilland DHC-6 to H-P about three times over the past eight years, whenever H-P's own commuter plane is in the shop. The planes are leased "dry," with H-P providing its own pilots.

The company flies the planes on a Roseville-to-San Jose route about four times a day -- a route that Elisabeth "Lizette" Otto, 31, flew regularly until she fell to her death out of the cabin door Thursday evening, company officials said.

An autopsy completed yesterday showed that Otto died from "multiple blunt force trauma injuries," a spokesman for the Sacramento County coroner said. Toxicology results were not expected for six to eight weeks.

Stephen said the 15-seat plane -- built in 1979 -- was refurbished in Twin Otter's FAA-approved shop when it was purchased three years ago and has since been leased to organizations including the federal Drug Enforcement Administration and other government groups. He said the plane has a documented clean maintenance history.

National Transportation Safety Board records do not show any incidents involving the plane.

Stephen said the emergency door that was opened during the flight, one of several doors on the plane, has a protective guard over the handle that would have to be held aside in order to open the door. "Once you did that, you'd have to force the door open against the wind and the prop wash," he said. "I didn't think it was possible. Not in flight."

Federal officials investigating Otto's death have ruled out mechanical malfunction, criminal activity and pilot error in the bizarre incident, a company spokeswoman said yesterday.

Searchers found Otto's body near a community vegetable garden and school south of Sacramento Friday afternoon.

In a recorded statement released yesterday, a Hewlett-Packard spokeswoman said Otto was a resident of the Netherlands who worked in the company's office in Germany. She was on temporary assignment in the United States, working in operations procurement in Hewlett-Packard's offices in Palo Alto and in Roseville, where the company has a 6,000-employee facility.

The plane from which Otto fell some 2,000 feet was on a flight regularly scheduled by the giant technology company. Passengers told investigators that Otto pried open the aircraft's rear emergency exit in flight and jumped, defying a co-worker's efforts to save her.

That co-worker, along with three other passengers who accompanied Otto and the plane's pilot and co-pilot, have all been interviewed by the FBI, said spokesman Andrew Black. "Our investigation has failed to indicate any foul play," Black said. "At this point, we're treating this incident as either a possible suicide, or a very unusual accident. And as no crime aboard the aircraft seems to have occurred, we are deferring to the Sacramento authorities."

A Sacramento coroner's official described the 31-year-old Otto as 5-foot-10 and weighed 139 pounds.

A shaken Michael Otto, Lizette Otto's husband, told The Chronicle yesterday he was not in any condition to talk about his wife or her death.

"I want to keep it quite private right now," he said. "I'm not ready to share this in the public space. I ask you to wait."

Otto said family members were on their way to the Bay Area from Europe. The apparent suicide resembled an incident that occurred just a week previously in British Columbia, in which a handcuffed prisoner forced open an airplane door and leaped to his death from 5,000 feet.

Canadian authorities said the prisoner, Donald Bigg, 46, was being transported for psychiatric evaluation in connection with sexual assault charges. Bigg overpowered a deputy sheriff, forced open the door of the single- engine plane and plunged into the Pacific Ocean. His body was not recovered.

[gatagato]

What a crazy call
Found 47 secs of the original audio here