You need to look a little deeper into Donaldson's qualifications. He never once led an accident investigation, and his participation as an accident investigator does not give him any special qualifications to make the bogus claims he made before he died. The world is full of former military men who make all kinds of claims. None of them are infallible. In fact, typically the men who speak the loudest are the men who know the least. Donaldson had good intentions and little else in this matter.
And why don't planes explode when hit by lightning?
Associated Retired Aviation Professionals
The NTSB's theory is that some unknown spark ignited the Jet A fuel vapors inside Flight 800's center fuel tank. This theory depends on 2 things: a) sufficient fuel vapors at the proper fuel/air mixture; and b) a sufficient spark to ignite the fuel vapors. Neither condition has been found to have been present in subsequent tests. In Boeing's recent filing with the NTSB they have stated that they have not found any source of spark in Flight 800. The NTSB would have you believe that Jet A fuel vapors are a virtual bomb waiting to go off, yet every day hundreds of 747's are sitting on hot runways in places like Saudi Arabia, India, etc. with empty center tanks and none have ever exploded. Every day aircraft with empty fuel tanks are hit by lightning, a spark thousands of times greater than necessary to ignite this vapor, yet these aircraft do not explode. Why, because the fuel vapor is not explosive.
