Why would someone shoot a man before throwing him out of a plane?

Answer 1

I don't know if this is supposed to be a riddle, you're writing a novel and the plot hinges on the hero getting shot / not getting shot in such a situation and you want to justify the version of events you like, or what.

However, there are plenty of reasons a person might be shot and then thrown out of a plane, if one of the other passengers wants him dead badly enough.

Shooting someone is a pretty good way to kill them. Shooting them on a plane might not be the brightest idea in the world, and let me sum it up with two words: hull integrity. If the plane is moving slowly enough and flying low enough, this may not matter much; at 500 knots and 40,000 feet, it all kinds of matters.

But let's say you're at an altitude low enough that the loss of cabin pressure is not a disaster, and that you're moving slowly enough that friction and turbulence aren't going to rip the plane open starting from the gunshot hole (this may not be terribly likely, but similar things have happened before; look up "United Airlines Flight 811" for an example).

In that case, you're low enough that the victim might survive simply being thrown from the plane; people have fallen from much higher and survived before (it's not likely, but it has happened). So if you want to be sure he's dead, you might want to shoot him, just to be sure.

But if you've shot him and he's dead (or at least dying, if your plot hinges on him improbably surviving), why bother to throw him out? Well, it does deal with the otherwise potentially embarrassing situation of a body dead of gunshot wounds in your plane; if you're planning to land it somewhere that sort of thing might be noticed, disposing of the body may make sense; the villain may be able to claim that the hero was never on the plane in the first place, and unless someone is specifically looking for him the instant the plane lands, it might even be that no one will notice the plane landed with one fewer passenger (presumably the other passengers and crew are in on it and can be trusted not to snitch) for some time.