How hard did Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 hit the water after it ran out of fuel and plummeted from cruising altitude? Not as hard as you might think, accident experts say.
The relatively intact condition of the wing piece that washed up on Reunion island off Africa suggests the Boeing Co. 777 may have hit the water more gently than in a head-on crash, according to former U.S. National Transportation Safety Board investigators Greg Feith and Jim Wildey, and Hans Weber, president of aviation consultant Tecop International Inc.
"That piece maintained its integrity. It's not crushed," Feith, a former senior investigator with the NTSB, said by phone from Denver. "You can deduce it was either a low-energy crash or a low-energy intentional ditching."
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