Lightning Thought To Be Cause Of Colombian Carribbean Island Crash Landing
 

United States ABC TV News showed broken AIRES plane and graphic of its
presumed hard landing

Lightning striking an airplane is apparently not so unusual, and it
perhaps hit this plane and/or a very strong sudden down draft or storm
wind did

The 737 broke into 3 pieces, and yet a lone casualty was a heart
attack, approx 130 people miraculously escaped physical injury

Lightning Thought To Be Cause Of Colombian Carribbean Island Crash Landing
 

Robert Cohen writes:

Lightning striking an airplane is apparently not so unusual, and it
perhaps hit this plane and/or a very strong sudden down draft or storm
wind did

The 737 broke into 3 pieces, and yet a lone casualty was a heart
attack, approx 130 people miraculously escaped physical injury

Lightning alone won't break an aircraft into pieces. Usually lightning strikes
are of no consequence. It will be interesting to see an explanation of exactly
how a lightning strike could have caused this accident.

Lightning Thought To Be Cause Of Colombian Carribbean IslandCrash Landing
 

On Aug 17, 6:10*pm, Mxsmanic wrote:
Robert Cohen writes:
Lightning striking an airplane is apparently not so unusual, and it
perhaps hit this plane and/or a very strong sudden down draft or storm
wind did

The 737 broke into 3 pieces, and yet a lone casualty was a heart
attack, approx 130 people miraculously escaped physical injury

Lightning alone won't break an aircraft into pieces. Usually lightning strikes
are of no consequence. It will be interesting to see an explanation of exactly
how a lightning strike could have caused this accident.

On tv a graphic presentation implied the plane sort of pre-maturely
landed (on its belly ?) on grass and skidded onto the runway
where it "broke" into "3 pieces" --amazing

The ABC TV expert commentator lauded the safety progress of the large
passenger plane generally, and
he says the high survival rate is seemingly due to built in better and
better safety stuff--do you agree?

There were apparently 3 or 4 people with body injury--apparently not
considered too serious

Lightning Thought To Be Cause Of Colombian Carribbean Island Crash Landing
 

Robert Cohen writes:

On tv a graphic presentation implied the plane sort of pre-maturely
landed (on its belly ?) on grass and skidded onto the runway
where it "broke" into "3 pieces" --amazing

How do they know what the airplane did without the results of an official
investigation?

The ABC TV expert commentator lauded the safety progress of the large
passenger plane generally, and
he says the high survival rate is seemingly due to built in better and
better safety stuff--do you agree?

No. They were just lucky. The design of the 737 is almost half a century old
(although the NGs had some design changes). It was a good design then, and it
remains a good design now, but obviously with 40+ years of history, any recent
increase in survival rates can't be due to design changes.

There has been a general improvement in safety practices and awareness,
though, which does help to explain higher survival rates.

There were apparently 3 or 4 people with body injury--apparently not
considered too serious

I heard today that the single fatality was due to a heart attack, but I
haven't been able to confirm that.