The Dutch Safety Board following months of investigation, have finally revealed details of the cause and the harrowing last moments experienced by the passengers and crew aboard flight MH 17, implying that a few passengers may have been conscious when the flight went down.
Air crash investigators have said pilots of Malaysian Airlines flight MH 17 were killed instantly when a 9N314M-type warhead was launched from the eastern part of Ukraine using a BUK missile system. The missile detonated just above the cockpit, Yahoo News reported.
The front portion of the aircraft after the explosion, was hit by shrapnel and "high energy objects" killing the three crew members in the cockpit instantly, while the aircraft's nose tore away from the business class section of the plane and crashed. The rest of the plane is said to have flown five miles before crashing to the ground.
The wreckage according to the safety board report was strewn across an area of 50 square kilometers. While the report suggests that many passengers died instantaneously, Dutch investigators have not rule out the possibility that some may have remained conscious, for the duration taken for the plane to crash, which has been estimated to have lasted for about 90 minutes, NBC News reported.
The investigators have clearly ruled out that the disaster had not been the result of an exploding fuel tank, or existing damage to the plane. Nor the cause of a natural disaster such as a meteor or a lightning strike.
The crew and the 298 passengers on board MH17 were completely unaware, when the missile exploded, leaving no time for a mayday call or an attempt to change directions. Following the cockpit separation from the fuselage of the plane, the report said those on board would have been exposed to extreme conditions inside the cabin.
Among the probable conditions experienced on board those could have included, "the aircraft abruptly changing speed, oxygen decreasing, extreme cold and air rushing through the cabin, objects flying around and a "very rapid descent," the news channel quoted the report as saying.
Previously, it was reported that 160 commercial aircraft flew over the same region that day, with the Malaysian Flight being the first and the worst disaster to be documented of recent times.