Re: Errr..clarification
"at altitude the baggage holds aren't (to my understanding at least) pressurised anyway."
If the hold were unpressurised then the cabin floor would collapse into the hold (building a flat sided pressure vessel is quite feasible, but it would be too heavy for commercial aircraft). And all the cans and bottles in hold baggage would leak or explode. I think what you are getting at is that the main cylindrical pressure vessel doesn't reach the full length of the external fuselage, and you can have unpressurised holds in the tail sections.
However, I followed the link in the article to read the provisional incident report (nice, short readable, have a look) and it covers all of this. The aircraft experienced no abnormal pressurisation indications, but the data shows the cabin air outflow valve automatically reduce its outflow to compensate for the faster reduction in pressure due to the breach. So yes, it did affect cabin air loss, but the rate of air loss was luckily within the capabilities of the automated pressurisation systems. Interestingly the pilots knew they'd run out of runway, but the report doesn't indicate that they told Miami control, who could have checked the security cameras that showed a strike, or ordered a physical investigation that would have found three damaged lights. This whole incident wouldn't have taken much to have been a whole lot worse - eg if the air pressure had widened the tear and the loss rate gone beyond the capabilities of the system, the aircraft could have depressurised mid Atlantic.
So the usual incident report:
Part A, No fatalities due to blind luck,
Part B, Trust machines, not meatsacks.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
