Watch the Film Here -- Flight 253 Bomb Blast Simulation Shows It Would Not Have Brought Down Plane

A test explosion on a Boeing 747 by BBC has shown that a U.S. Christmas Day flight would have landed safely even if a bomb on board was detonated successfully. The plane’s fuselage did not break in the controlled blast, which used the same explosives that were on Flight 253 from Amsterdam to Detroit. However experts said it showed the suspected bomber and the passenger next to him would have been killed. The controlled experiment was carried out for the BBC Two documentary, How safe are our Skies? Detroit Flight 253. An international terrorism and explosives adviser to the UN replicated the conditions on board the Detroit flight on a decommissioned Boeing 747 at an aircraft graveyard in Gloucestershire, England. The same amount of the explosive pentaerythritol (or PETN) allegedly carried by the terrorist was placed to mirror the location where he was sitting on the plane. Researchers concluded that the quantity of explosive used was nowhere near enough needed to rupture the skin of a passenger plane. Security Magazine Bloggers can watch the demo on tape at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/8547329.stm