ribit,
re: "most of the time when an airplane hits the ground like that, there is a huge fireball."
There weren't many great pictures of the actual crash. But that plane and its occupant got broken up into itty, bitty, rapidly-moving pieces. I did see a fireball in at least one of the videos.

Gold is $1,581/oz today. When it hits $2,000, it will be up 26.5%. Let's see how long that takes. - De 3/11/2013 - ANSWER: 7 Years, 5 Months