how many times in life do you experience AD hits from within a plane as a pilot/passenger? how would they know what to expect? it's clear that the missile hit the back of the plane (tail / fuselage), how would the pilot know whats happening besides losing hydraulics?
AD rocket, by design, inflicts catastrophic damage even on military aircraft that have far better survivability. Even 10K rounds per minute autocannon of the Pantsir would generate such a dense cloud of shrapnel it'd be difficult to mistake it for "birds", especially for the pilots.
the plane probably got hit by a pantsir missile, not autocannon fire. the damage is consistent with a proximity fuse warhead detonation. mh17 had exactly the same type of holes, except the buk missile is more powerful...
That'd be a first, if that's the case. To the best of my knowledge to date there haven't been any other cases where a civilian plane was hit by an AD missile and continued to fly. I can't find anything on Google either. The closest thing we got is flight TWA 840 in 1986 on which flew with a gaping hole in the fuselage, but that wasn't AD: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TWA_Flight_840_bombing
well then it's a first. i don't find it that unbelievable that a missile detonates near a plane and damages it but not enough for it to immediately crash...
