[lsllc]

When TWA Flight 800 went down over Long Island in 1996, there were at the time multiple witness statements of a "streak of light" which had been reported (and later discounted by the investigation) as a possible missile.

Although the odds are incredibly slim, I wondered around the time if it could have actually been a meteorite striking the aircraft, passing through the fuel tank and causing the explosion. Presumably it would have been moving very quickly, might have looked like a missile to an observer, and wouldn't have left any shrapnel debris/marks in the wreckage.

I would imagine that the space debris mentioned in the article would be a lot less dense and moving much more slowly (relatively speaking) than a meteorite at the impact with the aircraft.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TWA_Flight_800