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...
