Man Missing

Steward John Harris was picking up the passengers' pillows and blankets in the main cabin of the Pan American Stratocruiser. It was a little after 1130 a.m. and the airliner, inbound from London, was flying at 200 m.p.h., 8,000 ft. above Long Island. Steward Harris heard a hissing noise.

He summoned an officer; they found that the locking mechanism on the main door had somehow loosened and the door had sprung. Air from the pressurized cabin was hissing through the crack. The officer went back to the cockpit. Several of the passengers, waking up, watched Steward Harris as he experimentally held a blanket over the crack. He was trying to hang the blanket up when the door flew open.

Caught in the outward rush of air, Harris shot out through the door into the night with arms uplifted, still holding the blanket. While he fell--for about 50 leisurely, dreadful seconds--to his death, the airliner rumbled on, soon landed at New York's International Airport.

The same day, over Tampa Bay, Steward Marc Fisher-Galati, an ex-paratrooper, tried to pull shut the partially opened door of an Eastern airliner. The door, hinged at the bottom, fell open. Fisher-Galati plunged forward, was saved when his leg caught in a chain supporting the door. One of the crew tried vainly to haul Fisher-Galati back into the plane. He hung head downward for about ten minutes until the plane made an emergency landing.

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