Originally Posted by
WHBM
There were 9 scheduled jet departures 0400-0459, 3 0500-0559 (including the Ukrainian) and 4 0600-0659. It seems operating an hour or more late is also pretty standard there.
Thanks for the info. I believe the situation still leaves room for the aircraft to look potentially suspicious in the prevailing circumstances (not that this in any way excuses the actions of the operators).
MrsDoubtfire - your link didn't work for me, although that may be because of how my browser is configured.
A shoot down was the only viable conclusion I came to. I consider catastrophic failure of a wing tank and thus the loss of the aircraft, due to a UERF or FBO event to be even less likely than a SAM shootdown in the environment the aircraft was being operated in.
Debris trajectories are considered as part of the airworthiness requirements of the aircraft (as TDRacer mentions up thread - there is a requirement for +/- 5 degrees coverage forward and aft of a defined zone). On some aircraft designs, where it is not possible to avoid intersecting the wing with high energy damage, purposely dry volumes are designed in to try to stop fuel venting over parts of the engine hot enough to ignite the fuel. QF32 showed that a turbine could fail and penetrate the wing, and ignite fuel, but that a fire was likely to put itself out, either due to impinging air on the outside blowing the fire out, sheer liquid fuel quantity extinguishing the fire or due to a lack of air on the inside of the tank - fire uses up the bay free air. QF32 also shows that you can almost completely sever the front spar and maintain adequate structural integrity for normal flight and landing. This is not a design case!