Baseless aircrash speculation

[shpalman]

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?

[Martin Y]

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?

[dyqik]

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.

[shpalman]

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.