re: #465 jcm

A sudden catastrophic aircraft failure is extraordinarily rare. An airplane is a faraday cage, lightning seldom does serious damage. Turbulence sufficent to cause an in flight airframe failure is also rare.

We do know of one cause that would cause sudden in flight catastrophic failure, which might manifest as a electric fault signal.

A bomb.

To soon to tell, to many possibilities.

yeah. The article does mention the “T” word. Hard to say. I was just on a quick trip to Phoenix. On the return flight, I could see a huge towering storm cell with lightening out of my window. I was glad the pilot flew the plane around the cell and not through it.

My father used to fly all of the time on business. On one particular flight from Chicago to Denver, a woman sat down next to him. She was visibly upset and nervous. It was her very first time flying. My dad tried to comfort her. During the middle of the flight there was a big boom and the entire plane dropped, bounced and went dark.
Silence. The pilot never came on to say what happened. My dad thinks that the plane may have been struck by lightening. (& even he was spooked) The women vowed never to fly again.