The so-called underwear bomber wouldn't have brought down Northwest Flight 253 if he had succeeded in detonating the bomb in his pants, according to the results of a test conducted for the BBC.

A controlled test using a decommissioned Boeing 747 found the plane would have landed safely in Detroit. The plane's fuselage was not breached during a test that used the same amount and type of explosive Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab (pictured) is accused of carrying on Christmas Day. Abulmutallab and the passenger next to him would have been killed, the test found, and there would have been chaos aboard the Airbus A330 as it approached Detroit from Amsterdam.

"I'm very confident that the flight crew could have taken this airplane without any incident at all and get it on the ground safety," Captain J. Joseph, an air accident investigator involved in the test, told BBC News.

The controlled test was performed for the BBC Two documentary "How Safe Are Our Skies." Dr. John Wyatt, described by BBC as "an international terrorism and explosives advisor to the U.N." and Joseph conducted the test on an old 747 at an aircraft graveyard in England. They used the same amount of pentaerythritol Abulmutallab is accused of carrying and placed it in the same location the Nigerian was sitting aboard Flight 253.

The two experts concluded the amount was "nowhere near enough" the amount needed to breach the fuselage, according to BBC.

"If it was a more rigid material, then we might have seen a crack or breakthrough, but this is actually quite a flexible material," Wyatt said. "I was extremely impressed by the aircraft structure. It can sustain quite a hefty thump."

Flight 253 was approaching Detroit at an altitude of about 10,000 feet when Abulmutallab allegedly attempted the bombing. The BBC said that although its test was conducted on the ground, the difference in pressure inside and outside the aircraft would not have been sufficient to influence the outcome. It also said the fact the decommissioned 747 did not have any doors would not have been a factor in the test.

*Photo: U.S. Marshals

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