They don't open the rear hatch at 30,000 feet for drops.

What about the altitude makes a hole in the fuselage a catastrophic event? Lots of passenger jets have landed safely after having a (sometimes large) hole appear in the fuselage at cruising altitude.

Yeah, PARFers why don't you run Archie for President?

OK then, lets have shoot outs on planes at cruising altitudes! OK Coral at 30,000 feet!

Oye....

Por, do the math if you have to. What do jets pressurize the cabin to? ... Let's call it shy 1 atm, and put the jet in space ..call it 14psi delta just to be extreme. Now, just how fast do you expect the air around a 14psi bullet hole to be rushing? ...think of the air pushing out of a valve stem of an almost flat tire at 14 psi. (oh the violent carnage.)

Here is a new angle: MH370 could have been hacked by smart phone and commandeered!

Missing Malaysia Airlines plane may have been 'cyber-hijacked' using mobile phone | World | News | Daily Express

A catastrophic decompression can be just as dramatic as hollywood portrays...There are several examples of decompression literally tearing a fuselage apart. Air out of a valve stem is one example of a leak from a few atmospheres, so is a balloon popping.
The Aloha airlines aircraft that landed as a convertible had a fuselage crack lead to a catastrophic decompression that ended up tearing a good portion of the top of the cabin off, after a flight attendant was thrown hard into the structure by the escaping air and caused the crack to extend to a massive failure.
Gun fire in a pressurized aircraft is most certainly not a good idea. And to the point mentioned of high altitude drops from military aircraft, they depressurize before breaching the cabin.

Total BS....certainly no way they could over rule crew input.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1394956515.jpg

It looks like they jump from 35,000 .....If they don't open the hatch how do they get out of the plane?


High-altitude military parachuting - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

HALO jumps occur from extreme altitudes sometimes from aircraft that don't pressurize the cabin area and some after in flight controlled decompression. At that point opening a door is not a particularly dangerous task, though windy as hell.
If you look at a door on a pressurized aircraft at say a 10 PSI differential, say the door is 9 square feet, every square foot is 144 square inches, each inch experiences an outward pressure of 10 lbs, that means the door as a whole is stressed to the tune of 12 960 lbs

The Dehaviland Comet is a good example of a structural failure due to pressurization, I think they lost 3 before they figured out square windows were a bad idea.

Yup. At altitude there is a significant pressure difference between the atmosphere and airplane fuselage. If you create a small hole, there is a huge amount of pressure on that now compromised area of the fuselage trying to make it a bigger hole. So it's not so much the pressurization leak (airplanes always leak), it's the good chance that the little hole is going to get much bigger. That's why shooting a hole in the fuselage of a pressurized airplane is very much not a good idea.

HALO jumps are a totally different deal. The cargo bay is depressurized so it is equal to the outside atmosphere, and the jumpers and crew are on oxygen.

Mythbusters...

<iframe width="640" height="360" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/4yG2h1aDB6k?feature=player_detailpage" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Found it!
Boeing 777-300

https://scontent-a-sea.xx.fbcdn.net/...12791412_n.jpg

I am wondering if the flight simulator the captain had in his home could give a clue on what kind of manovers he was training for. We may find that he was training for fast ascensions to 45,000 feet to knock out the passengers, and that would make him the culprit. I am not sure if the software keeps track of it though, like a black box, but that is definitely something to look into. The next question is about motive, and I will never understand why people who want to commit suicide also feel they have to take 200+ lives with them.

We're not even going to know another real fact until the plane is found.

Even then, there may not be much useful data in the CVR.

The FDR might capture the final moments and the last flight.

Don't try to understand suicide. Your sane. Only the insane can understand it.

And taking a bunch of people with you is the ultimate act of a coward.