This is new. After news that lightning and turbulance (read bad weather) could have crashed Air France 447 that killed over 200 people in one of the worst aircraft accidents, there are experts who don’t rule out the role of meteors striking the plane.
While the topic has invited many to offer up their opinions on what could have happened, some even cite Flight 800’s explosion and subsequent crash in 1996 to have been caused by a meteor the size of a plane.
But my considered view is that it could well have been extreme turbulence. Why not a meteor, you ask? Because most meteors disintegrate before they penetrate the earth’s atmosphere and those who don’t are too small to cause much impact on a giant aircraft like the 447. At best, they could punch holes on entry and exit, not explode the plane and these airframes can probably sustain that kind of impact in most parts and still fly (remember that Australian flight that lost the entire top of its forward cabin?).
However, one expert tells me that the Airbuses are completely fly-by-wire, no old-fashioned cable or screw backups, and if that goes dark in that heavy turbulence, you are totally out of trim before the backups can come up.
Hmmm.