Shot down: ‘Numerous high-energy objects’ caused MH17 to crash

Wreckage of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 is “consistent with the damage that would be expected from a large number of high-energy objects that penetrated the aircraft from outside”, a preliminary report by the Dutch Safety Board (DSB) has revealed. The report, published on Tuesday, said MH17 crashed due to external objects penetrating the fuselage and that “there are no indications that the MH17 crash was caused by a technical fault or by actions of the crew”. The findings support earlier assertions that the plane was hit by a missile. The report set out what is believed to have happened, but did not apportion blame.

Damage observed on the forward fuselage and cockpit section of the aircraft appears to indicate that there were impacts from a large number of high-energy objects from outside the aircraft.

Extract from the DSB report

The DSB said the black boxes recovered from the war-torn crash site in Ukraine showed no evidence of manipulation and “gave no indication of any malfunction or emergency” before the crash. At the time of the crash, the aircraft was flying at a height of 33,000ft in the eastern part of Ukraine. It was flying on a constant heading, speed and altitude when the black box flight data recorder ended, the DSB report said. At the time of the crash, the Boeing 777 was in radio communication with air traffic controllers at the Ukrainian city of Dnipropetrovsk. All 298 passengers and crew on board the plane were killed when the aircraft crashed en-route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur over an area in eastern Ukraine controlled by pro-Russian separatists

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