Continental on Mythbusters
 

I'm watching Mythbusters on the Discovery Channel and they are talking about that accident where a plane blew up as the result of a bomb and a flight attendant survived the fall in the tailcone. They just cut the tail off a Continental plane in the boneyard to test the 'myth'. I guess they are going to drop it from altitude. You can see a bunch of Continental DC10s sitting around. Pretty cool. :D

Wow, carnage...they just dropped it. They concluded that it is very plausable that someone could survive. Cool. ^

Forgive me for asking, but how does one get into the tailcone? That's not someplace I'd expect to find a passenger or a crew member.

I remember that story from about 25 years ago. I think the FA was in the rear galley, (back when they served meals at mealtime) and the bomb blast threw her further back into the cone section. Supposedly, the plane fell some 30,000 feet and she in the tail section landed in a snow covered forest. She was knocked out due to the blast and the thought was in her relaxed ^ state she was able to absorb the impact. I think she broke her back or something and she was Chech or Romanian...

Like I said, this is from a web covered part of the old brain here. I will take NO offense at anyone who corrects me!! :D

You have been enhanced, running very quickly, a tin elite,
no easypass seats were open

I thought they were debunking the myth the CO never allocates Standard BF award seats to Hawaii...

I thought it was going to be the story where Bethune gives the obnoxious pax in F $600 and says "now get the f--- off my plane". I'd like to see them tackle that..... :D

More detail on the story here...she's doing well now. I always thought it was the tailcone, but if you scroll down, she says she was told she was actually found in the midsection, underneath a food trolley. Probably was mealtime.

http://www.avsec.com/asi/editorial/vesna.htm

From the page cerealmarketer links to:
So, as he says, it sounds like the myth is that she was in the tail cone, if this is indeed the incident Mythbusters was trying to investigate.

... and I love the understatement at the end of the part I quoted!

A CO 747 is currently on Smash Lab... they're trying to make it bomb-proof. They went out to the desert & found one without doors, some windows, a nose cone, etc.

I saw that last night as well!

Dan

Well don't leave me hanging, what was the end result????

they were blowing up what appeared to be old hawaiian DC9 variants.

pressurized two planes to 16k feet. detonated C4 in the first and blew a huge hole in the side and roof. detonated the second with a blast coating installed (looked like huge white bubble wrap). another huge hole, however it was 30% smaller than the first.

in both instances an AC flying at 16K or higher would have broken into bits.

Mythbusters also did this
 

Saw one Kari Byron show (aka mythbusters) recently (although dont know when it was filmed) where they challenged several of the "catastrophic decompression" myths. Did the same boneyard altitude pressurization setup and then 1. fired a bullet at a window; 2. tried to open a door in flight, and 3. set off a smaller shaped charge in the passenger compartment.

The bullet did nothing, not possible to open an exit door when the cabin is pressurized, and the explosive killed the guy sitting next to it (not possible to tell if the plane would be able to land in one piece or not)

Kari puts on a great show!

http://mythbustersresults.com/episode10
http://mythbustersresults.com/episode38