As many have pointed out, pitot tubes are stoneage technology – think 1910s. Modern airliners don’t fall out of the sky because the pitot ices over! Autopilots on jetliners don’t start overcompensating because the pitotstatic system fails! Gimme a break! There would be at least 3 or 4 alternative and better speed inputs, GPS, inertial, you name it. Neither do modern airliners break up because of a lightning strike, or because of severe turbulence. Even extreme turbulence – it would have to be more than a few very nasty bumps to cause a breakup.
But if we really are talking extreme turbulence, why ON EARTH would an experienced crew take the plane into a cu-nim cloud, which is the only place you would strike such turbulence . . granted you can get some pretty nasty turbulence in the vicinity of a thunderstorm, but not such as would cause a modern airliner to disintegrate – but what was the crew doing flying into such easily avoidable conditions anyway? Airliners fly through the intertropic convergence zone hundreds of time a day without falling apart.
It’s all very puzzling. An small explosion – Lockerbie in slow motion, causing a loss of control and a breakup in consequence – fits all the evidence.
