>The bomb only created a relatively small hole in the plane's fuselage, however, and the aircraft was able to return to Mogadishu and land safely. Somali authorities now believe that they know who carried the bomb onto the plane and detonated it: A man who was then sucked out of the hole in the fuselage and became the attack's only fatality. (Only two minor injuries were reported among other passengers and crew.)
It's looking like there was an explosion in air. Could be external, could be a bomb onboard. Though the location of the crash is a bit suspicious, given the number of aircraft that've crashed (allegedly due to being shot down) in the area recently.
Given how politically charged this is, I'm expecting we probably won't have consensus on this for a long time, perhaps ever.
If the plane had been blown up by a bomb or shot down, it would have broken up into chunks which would have landed largely intact, because fuselage sections are quite light compared to their volume. You can see this in pictures of other downed or bombed planes, such as the one shot down over Ukraine. Most of the bodies would have fallen out of the plane or come down in the fuselage sections and been mostly intact. Bombs and missiles simply don't destroy the whole vehicle so completely.
The only way the bodies could all have been so thoroughly destroyed is if the plane smashed into the ground as a single piece under power at full speed, which would require full control authority for the pilot. Even if it had drifted or spun into the ground, perhaps due to loss of control from a small bomb or weapon damage, it would have been too slow for the observed effect, because we know what those crashes look like as well. The speculative electronic interference weapons would also have induced a more conventional crash, not one at full speed under power.
Also the article even opens with an eye witness account of the intact plane hitting the ground under power, the witness even describes the engine noise.
It is possible a small bomb or grenade did go off, but wasn't powerful enough to disable the plane. However if it did happen that just supports or at least is consistent with the passenger revolt theory.
What the article tries to do is throw out as much information presented in as discordant a way as possible, to create openings for speculation. However the conspiracy scenarios presented don't actually fit the evidence at all. all the rest about mysterious planes and such is irrelevant noise to the facts of the crash itself.
This is what seals it for me. Sadly, so much time has elapsed, and the world has turned to such shit, that we have multiple other incidents to compare to. Not just MH17, but also PS752, and many others that did not receive as much attention (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_airliner_shootdown_inc...). TWA800 looks nothing like these.
My mind isn't closed on this one, but the case appears pretty clear-cut to me. While it could have exploded mid air, I seriously doubt it crashing in the war zone was a coincidence.
IMO The mystery of MH370 is partially due to some incorrect assumptions, which can't be proven or disproven until the main wreckage is found, and/or the blackboxes recovered.
Where the wreckage ended up could depend several factors.
eg. glide ratio of a 777 (~18:1), or how the 777 Fly-by-wire control system works under certain failure modes. There hasn't been a crew incapacitation crash in a fly-by-wire airliner before.
A small fire in the electrical bay could disable aircraft systems in unexpected ways, and possibly even burn out on its own, and the damage doesn't actually cause the jet to crash immediately. If the cockpit crew were incapacitated at cruise altitude, the jet could still end up 100 miles away from the point the engines flamed out.
Kinda.
While the 2018 incident was "contained", it still resulted in damage to the fuselage.
"Two small punctures were found in the right side fuselage just below the window belt with material transfer consistent with impact from pieces of an engine fan blade"
>The bomb only created a relatively small hole in the plane's fuselage, however, and the aircraft was able to return to Mogadishu and land safely. Somali authorities now believe that they know who carried the bomb onto the plane and detonated it: A man who was then sucked out of the hole in the fuselage and became the attack's only fatality. (Only two minor injuries were reported among other passengers and crew.)
http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2016/02/05/somali_air...
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