Originally Posted by
t1grm
What a scary incident but, tragic as one death is, this seems to impress on me the resilience of modern aircraft. Surely a similar failure in the 70's/80's would have bought the aircraft down?
This comment was lost in the shuffle for a bit.
Actually, the fundamental fuselage structure of the 737 is largely unchanged from the airplane's original design - with the first flight of the prototype in April, 1967.