Missing Man Is Found Dead

A Los Angeles aviation expert who vanished more than a week ago after dining with friends was found dead in his car Monday at the bottom of a Malibu-area ravine, authorities said.

Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies spotted the car of Michael Dornheim, 51, a senior engineering editor for Aviation Week & Space Technology, while patrolling Malibu by helicopter about 12:45 p.m.

Dornheim’s 1997 Honda Civic was found upside down below an embankment on Piuma Road in Carbon Canyon, between coastal Malibu and inland Calabasas. Police said the ravine was two miles east of Saddle Peak Lodge, where he had dinner with friends June 3.

Dornheim told friends he was planning on taking back roads to his home in the Westlake district of Los Angeles. Friends reported him missing June 4 after he failed to show up for appointments and did not return telephone calls and e-mails.

California Highway Patrol officials said they were “scratching their heads” as to how Dornheim’s car ended up in the ravine.

“He navigated the turns just fine, and then, in a straightaway, for whatever reason, he went off the cliff,” said CHP Officer Leland Tang.

“Not a rock was disturbed. Not even the brush was disturbed.”

Officers found only a slight rubber scuff mark on one of the guardrails and pieces of his car littering the 500-foot-high hillside.

Tang said investigators had not confirmed whether alcohol was a factor. Dornheim was wearing his seat belt.

Tipped off by police, family and friends appeared at the ravine before investigators had identified Dornheim’s body. “We had people crying, passing out,” Tang said. “We had paramedics attending to family and friends.”

Aviation Week, where Dornheim had worked for 22 years, was alerted of his disappearance by friends, said Steve Weiss, a company spokesman. “His passion for aviation was contagious, and he will be deeply missed,” said Tom Henricks, the company’s president.

Jim Asker, the magazine’s managing editor, said Dornheim had a “unique combination of engineering education and experience ... inquisitiveness and dogged perseverance. When it comes to things that fly -- whether in the atmosphere or in space -- no one could explain better than Mike Dornheim how things worked or, more importantly, why they didn’t.”

Dornheim was a three-time winner of the Royal Aeronautical Society’s Aerospace Journalist of the Year award and was a finalist again this year, Weiss said. He was a nationally known aviation expert who appeared on a number of television programs.

The cause of death has been listed as an accident, but the Los Angeles County coroner’s office is still investigating, said Craig Harvey, the department’s chief of operations.

Since Dornheim’s car is too heavy to lift out of the ravine, Tang said, investigators will simply mark it and leave it.