Very smart move, sir - safer than trying to mess with the door in flight. /thread drift off/

Journalists have jumped to the conclusion that since it is likely the student would be taking antimalarial tablets, that Larium might be to blame. Quite how they might know what antimalarial she might be taking. I have to say I first took Larium in 2001 and there was a lot of speculation its links with mental health problems and suicide, oddly most of the cases as I recall, seemed to be young women. I'm not sure if any scientific link was ever made with mental health problems and Larium and it has now been around for twenty years. The only thing was at the time, my AME instructed me as a pilot not to take it, I think that was more down to the potential problems with pilot disorientation.

Do not we all remember something similar in the UK in Jan 2002 - over the Brize zone
Cessna 172 - passenger jumped out

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/201...ndation-widget

A Cambridge University student described as a “bright, independent young woman" forced open the door of a light plane and leapt 5,000ft to her death during a research trip to Madagascar.The parents of Alana Cutland, 19, had become so concerned about her state of mind they sent a family friend to the island to bring their daughter home.But it now appears that on the first leg of the flight back to the UK Miss Cutland grew so agitated she fought off the friend before jumping from the Cessna light plane.

The friend, 51-year-old Ruth Johnson, is understood to have grappled with the student in a desperate attempt to prevent her falling from the plane last Thursday.At one stage the Cessna’s pilot is also thought to have grabbed Miss Cutland’s leg in a bid to stop her.But local police said Miss Cutland, from Milton Keynes, was able to free herself from their “exhausted” grip as the plane flew across the island, off the coast of east Africa.

Following a mid-air between a PA28 and C152 nearly ten years ago, I understand one of the students in the 152 is believed to have jumped from altitude to his death. Lighter door than larger Cessna's but similar forces required.
NTSB Identification: WPR09FA437A

I've twice had Piper doors open on me just after takeoff. Once in a PA28, and once in a PA38. If Piper brings out a PA48 I'm not driving one.
There was enough suction/cabin pressure from the ventilation to pop the door ajar, but enough pressure from the external airflow no prevent it opening further. Couldn't open it to slam it, couldn't pull it shut. My solution, as an 18 y.o., 16 hrs in his log flying scholarship student on his first solo cross-country, was to climb to 5,000 ft, fully stall it, at which point I could open the door to slam it shut properly, and proceed to my next waypoint - inside the Boscombe Down MATZ, if I recall correctly.

Didn't bother writing that particular incident up in my logbook.

Reckon someone would need to be having a full-blown psychotic incident to muster enough strength to push the door open enough to get out. Dreadfully sad for the student and her family.

But clearly not in a light Cessna, Pearly White?

Student jumps/falls to their death
 

Maybe the simple answer to the aircraft type is not to stare blindly at the Cessna but to suggest that this may have been a Partenavia 168???
That might also put paid to the propwash theory as the resistance on a twin-engined P 168 may be less severe than on a single engined Cessna?

ReddestBaron

Not a Partenavia 168. Photo of the actual aircraft here;

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...O-minutes.html

Which doesn't exist.

The airplane pictured is a Cessna 182E. Though difficult to get yourself out the door in flight, if you worked at it you could. The open door will stream 4 to 6 inches open, being more difficult to close or open more. However, if a person forced themselves out the door and made it part way out, pulling them back in would be extremely difficult, as the streamlining door would pinch on them. I would estimate that a person whose torso was mostly out the door would be near impossible to pull back in, even if they wanted back in. I speak this as a former jump pilot in many types of Cessnas. Once a jumper is part way out, they're not coming back in. and that's with a jump door, as opposed to a regular door. There would be no way that the pilot or other passenger could have made a better outcome once the passenger was part way out the door.

Sideslip would affect the open door. I've had the door open solo in a Pa28 and with a pax in a C152.
I've never tried keeping the ball in the middle in a Cessna while holding onto to someone (who is struggling) with my right hand, arm at full stretch.

Desperation to complete the task will add to the young lady's strength.

Am I alone on here in feeling sorrow at her passing?

Pretty sure that's not the only one out of a 172 and didn't a woman open the air stair and jump from a King Air on approach to Leavesden about 30 years ago.

Reminds me of this,

https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/artic...to-3236673.php



I can see her getting the door open using her body weight and the strength in her legs.

If she was sitting in the front passenger seat and slid it all the way back she could crack the door open enough to squeeze through, particularly if the aircraft was sideslipping and there was less pressure on that side. Once partially out, gravity and slipstream would do the rest.

Any news paper which gets the manufacturer's name right is doing well, let alone the correct type. Stock photographs are often used which is all a Sun reader needs.

That's where the evidence seems to point Timmy. There are quite a few prescription drugs listing psychotic side-effects in the literature, so this, perhaps in association with her "difficulty managing her personal life and studies" were the cause. If this is the case, it's highly unlikely investigators would dare to implicate a widely prescribed pharmaceutical drug in her death, or bother to investigate her relationships with lecturers. If "The Mentalist" was on the case, that's where he'd be looking....