hence all the general purpose hysteria amongst passengers and media.
Media, yes...The Times of today "20,000 foot plunge after belly ripped off"...etc, usw, ad nauseam.
Passengers, no; evidently no hysteria or panic whatsoever. And lots of mobile footage to prove it. Alarmed, maybe, but who wouldn't be alarmed? Yoiu would have to be pretty stupid or drunk not to be concerned about what was happening, at least for a moment or two, after a loud bang followed by rapid decompression. Flight 103 probably felt much the same to many in the cabin, in the first seconds after the bomb went off. But the trick is suppressing the alarm and appearing calm, and they achieved that very well, it seems.
It's the message that many of us try to get over in various pprune fora; passengers not only pay the crew's wages, they are typically very well-educated in what happens on board an aircraft. They do not deserve the ritual auto-contempt that so many in the industry give them, for example writing without thought ..............
general purpose hysteria amongst passengers and media.