It is certainly possible for a meteorite to strike a commercial airliner, although the probability is low. We can make a very rough estimate by comparing the area of airliners with the area of cars in the United States. A typical car has an area of the order of 10 square meters, and there are roughly 100 million cars in the United States, for a total cross-sectional area of about a thousand square kilometers. For comparison, the typical airliner has a cross-sectional area of several hundred square meters, but the number of planes is smaller, perhaps a few thousand, for a total cross-sectional area of no more than 10 square kilometers, or a factor of at least 100 less than that of cars. Now three cars are known to have been struck by meteorites in the US in the past century, so it would appear that most probably no planes have been hit, but it is not impossible that one might have. To my knowledge there have been no reports of planes being struck, however. If a plane were hit, it would be more likely on the ground than in the air. And finally, even if a plane were hit in flight by a meteorite, it would be unlikely to cause an explosion of the sort that ended the flight of TWA Flight 800 last year. For the response of the other Scientists, please go to the Ask the Experts: http://www.sciam.com/askexpert/astronomy.html#acs86 Column at Scientific Americans Web Site. |
