One anonymous Air France pilot suggested that a bomb could “very well” be the cause of the crash. He said: “One can very well imagine that a bomb caused the aircraft’s depressurisation and that the plane took time to break up. It could just as well have been a big bomb that blew up the entire plane, which would explain why the aircraft didn’t have time to send an alert signal.”

Unnamed experts quoted by the Le Monde newspaper said the “wide dispersion of wreckage discovered suggests that the Airbus (A330-200) exploded at high altitude”.

However the involvement of a bomb has been dismissed by most and remains extremely unlikely.