REVELATIONS the body of an Australian passenger from Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 was found with an oxygen mask should come as no surprise, an aviation expert says.
Former pilot and air traffic control operator Peter Smith said it was “extremely unlikely” the Buk surface-to-air missile that brought down the Boeing 777 would have killed everybody on board immediately.
Despite the damage, a number of the aircraft emergency systems would probably still have been working, including the automatic deployment of oxygen masks, Mr Smith said.
“It is entirely likely that a number of passengers may have been able to begin breathing through the emergency oxygen system in the depressurised cabin of the aircraft as it fell to earth,” he said.
“I know this is not what the relatives of passengers on board the aircraft would probably wish to hear but in my view it is certainly probable that many, perhaps even the majority of the passengers would still have been conscious and alive as the aircraft dropped out of the sky.”
Those who did not manage to breathe emergency oxygen would have been rendered unconscious quite quickly, perhaps within one to two minutes, he said.
“But I am reasonably certain that many of the passengers would have known precisely what was happening to the aircraft as it fell from the sky, even if they had no idea why.”
http://www.news.com.au/travel/trave...foreign-minister/story-fnizu68q-1227085259511
