katSLF wrote:
Oh and another thing -- in decompressions where the plane remained intact and flyable, there always were PILOTS left to fly it and controls left to take their commands. Here the pilots and the avionics were the first to go.
This is not always the case. TWA800 and Hughes Airwest 709 remained in one piece while the cockpit was gone. In fact, the investigators of Pan Am 103 (lockerby) had poblems to explain why the rear section broke up in many pieces. So they said that broken cables gave last seconds imput etc during cockpit section separation. The 777 has no cable steering in that sense, so the steering surfaces would end in a locked beutral position.