I think we should ditch the whole "wooden pallets" line of inquiry... it is disrespectful to the experts who lost their lives last week; and it's the height of leading the jury up the garden path!
A few realities:
- Those photographs involving the use of wooden pallets are photographs of a different load in a different aircraft belonging to a different airline some years ago. We have no information whether wood was even used in this aircraft, let alone its orientation. People who are in the know have already quelled the hysteria over the wood, yet people still imagine they are looking at a 12 ton truck balancing on a few blocks of balsa.
- The people who decide whether this is acceptable are actual experts working in the actual field, not a collection of pilots (different expertise altogether), enthusiasts, or journalists all chipping into a forum. We cannot do anything with the wooden pallets line from the sofa command centre so lets let it drop, Wikipedia wont help you there either. Wood is good for a great many things so lets not feed the Daily Dross with excuses to write headlines like "Plane falls from sky because it was built of wood in cost cutting exercise" (sic).
- Anyone who says "the plane would have been loaded by the military" is just plain making it up. the plane would have been loaded by the airline's own loadmasters to the exacting standards they use every day, knowing they were going to be on the aircraft too. The local ramp staff might have helped push, but that's about it, they would be under the scrutiny of the loadsheet signatory.
If this load shifted, we should assume it shifted because of unforeseen and unevaluated reasons, not because they were dumb enough to wedge the trucks in place with chocolate and string. These guys aren't around to defend themselves so lets at least have the respect to assume they did their job right until somebody with access to actual facts can demonstrate otherwise?