Originally Posted by
tdracer
I wouldn't consider 100m x 200m large at all - in fact for an aircraft the size of a 767 that's on the small side. It would also rule out any in-flight breakup (unless of course they find bits at another location).
I also would consider an uncontained engine failure to be rather unlikely since they'd have been at a relatively low engine power setting - most engine breakups at takeoff power sets, or at high altitudes where the physical rotor speeds tend to high. I suppose a major bird strike might cause enough damage and a large enough imbalance that perhaps the engine could start coming apart, but again the probability would be low at relatively low rotor speeds.
But, one of more big birds through the forward bulkhead that took out some flight controls (remember, the 767 is basically a cable controlled aircraft)? Even if it didn't incapacitate the crew they'd have precious little time to react...
The debris field of the airframe is commented on, and is not particularly large as reported so far, but the point of interest will be any debris in the 3-4nm to the east of the aircrafts impact point. At idle, the engine still has around 20-25% of the kinetic energy of the full thrust uncontained failure case, enough to cause further damage. As far as I recall, there has only been one incident on the 767 GE where an uncontained failure damaged the second engine, and that was a liberated disk fragment bouncing off the ground and impacting the other engine.