by Cheryl Rofer
We don't know yet that the big hole that got blown in that Qantas 747 was anything other than an accident. But it illlustrates a point I've been making on the hysteria surrounding possible airplane terrorism.
Airplanes are pretty strong, and airline personnel are pretty good at what they do.
So if you have an explosive with a slow detonation velocity, like the kind that might get made by mixing two liquids together if you have a cooling bath and filtration apparatus, you need a lot of it to blow a hole in an airplane that would take it down. My guess is that even if the shoe bomber had managed to detonate his shoes, something like this would have happened.
Pilots, being on the airplane too, are highly motivated to bring it down safely. And the doors to the cockpit are now reinforced and locked. And I'll bet that the cabin attendants now have some additional training in dealing with unruly passengers. And we other passengers are willing to attack the attackers.
The explosive decompression on the Qantas 747 could have been a lot of things. The word explosive does not necessarily signify the use of chemical explosives. The pressure inside the cabin is enough higher than the outside pressure at crusing altitude that a structural failure could have caused a noise like an explosion. The air rushing out can cause quite a bit of damage. Or it could have been a pressurized can in someone's checked baggage.
Or it could have been a terrorist bomb. If that's the case, we've got a nice data point. But I suspect that the passengers won't be getting their checked baggage back any time soon.