Originally Posted by
CessnaJock
Demolish is the right word, because the overpressure resulting from the detonation would cause the fuselage to unzip along rivet lines - think TWA800 - and then aerodynamic forces would rip asunder any surviving airframe.
But even a contact lens solution bottle full of nitroglycerine didn't demolish an entire plane when detonated in-flight (it killed the occupant of the seat over the bomb and injured a few others). Granted that Yousef didn't place the bomb against the fuselage--he was trying for the fuel tanks--but that's still a lot of explosives to detonate without damaging the fuselage at all.
I suspect an overpressure followed by a decompression would only cause catastropic airframe failure in exceptional cases and would not be the outcome terrorists could count on.