Originally Posted by
olasek
Before talking about explosives lets first look at something much more likely that happened before - say like Air France flight 447 quite recently, a jetliner full of people plummets from high cruise alt. to sea.
That's what I meant when I said : No proven ways. AF447 was almost a first in its kind. I didn't consider AF447 a proven way, rather (hopefully) an exception.
Or numerous business jets that fell from their cruising altitudes after penetrating a thunderstorm (a Westwind jet out of Dallas executive airport is a particularly nasty case), so yes, it had happened before that a jet aircraft fell from their cruising altitudes and there were no explosives involved.
OK, flying directly into a TS is indeed a proven way but my understanding so far was that they flew along some TS but not straight into it.
By the way a structural failure often happens during a way down when pilots try to recover and overstress the aircraft - this was the case for the Westwind scenario - overstress caused the gear door to separate which flew off and severed the horizontal stabilizer. Overstressing has little to do with old/new aircraft.
But this requires complete LoC upfront which -except flying directly into a cell- is a very rare occurrence.