However, this “explosive decompression” would have happened with bullets too, if the pressurized airliner were punctured by bullets instead of shrapnel. You will immediately notice the big gaping hole that had been shot through the side-panel where the pilot sits — in other words, targeting directly at the plane’s pilot. This is incredibly precise targeting, of a specific person, and not merely of the far larger body of an airliner. A fighter jet plane that’s perhaps escorting the airliner into the conflict-zone can. By contrast, the hail of bullets to the Malaysian plane’s pilot came from below the plane, aiming upward at the cockpit, from both sides of the cockpit.