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Sriwijaya Air Boeing 737

It's an older model, a 737-500, so nothing to do with the problems the MAX had. The profile wouldn't fit anyway: it appears to have basically fallen out of the sky having reached about 10,000'.

Explosive decompression due to metal fatigue?

Explosive decompression isn't likely at 10,000 ft.

Don't high altitude flights typically allow cabin pressure to drop to about 8-10k feet equivalent?

Martin Y wrote: ↑

Sat Jan 09, 2021 6:47 pm

Explosive decompression isn't likely at 10,000 ft.

Don't high altitude flights typically allow cabin pressure to drop to about 8-10k feet equivalent?

8k usually, which is about 75% of an atmosphere, or about 1.2 psi pressure difference at 10k feet. If that didn't happen, it's a ~5 psi over pressure at 10k feet.

Typical pressure differences between 8k ft and cruising altitude are ~7-8 psi, so even with a failure to lower the pressure, the pressure difference is 2/3 of the nominal design value.

True that there shouldn't have been that much of a pressure difference at 10,000'. The cabin altitude needs to be maintained at 8,000' or below on commercial flights, but that's relevant when at cruising altitude.

We recently had a 737-700 suffer decompression due to an uncontained engine failure, but not in a way which was catastrophic for the airframe.