What they said is that they haven’t SEEN evidence of fire or explosion on board. They have recovered little of the aircraft, and a small explosion in a critical area could have brought the plane down. On the other hand, sudden loss of the vertical and horizontal stabilizers (à la Long Island) could have quickly brought the plane down.

The “sudden fall” reported by the automatic system is only speculation… There was a quite rapid loss of cabin pressure, that was reported automatically as a “rapid loss of cabin-altitude” The plane could have remained at the same real altitude, but because the structure was compromised it lost pressure inside the aircraft.

Bottom line… we just don’t know what happened on-board, and won’t really know until the flight recorders are (we hope) recovered and analyzed.

no explosion according to experts, but a sudden fall

«J’ai vu la paroi qui sépare l’endroit où se trouve l’équipage pour préparer les repas et le compartiment des passagers, a confié au journal l’ex-pilote. Des fauteuils y étaient fixés. Ce qui est curieux, c’est que ces fauteuils doubles, utilisés exclusivement par l’équipage étaient repliés. Ils sont bien plus fins que ceux des passagers et sur les photos, on voit les ceintures de sécurité qui pendent. Cela suggère que l’équipage circulait dans les couloirs de l’avion. En cas de signal d’alerte ou de l’imminence d’un risque quelconque, l’équipage serait resté assis à sa place». «Ils n’ont eu le temps de rien faire», a souligné Ari Germano, qui a aussi reconnu une malette orange intacte de kit de premiers secours.”

The fly-by-wire failure theory can be put to bed. This leaves four possibilities:

1) A bomb.
2) A spontaneous structural failure
3) An extreme hail event
4) Spooky unexplained explosion a la TWA 800

Just to refresh everyone’s memory, there never was a definite determination of the cause of TWA 800. The official report mumbled something about an electrical short, but it never actually claimed that to be the certain cause. To this day, there’s no certain explanation.

If I had to bet money, I know which one I’d bet on.

If Air France let people on board who were listed as terrorists then either it was an inside job or something is very lax with security.

I feel so sorry for those who were killed and their families.

Here’s hoping that they find the black box. I hope it was not terrorism, but today’s world is so nuts that it might have been.