We amateurs should leave the speculation to the experts.
Hot off the wire at CNN.com :
Aviation expert Philip Butterworth-Hayes told CNN that the data was unusual -- especially since takeoffs like this are typically controlled by the plane's automatic systems."This doesn't fit an automatic flight profile," Butterworth-Hayes said while studying the data. "Unless, the aircraft was trying to correct itself at the time for a number of reason
"This shows an unusually unstable vertical flight profile," he added.
"Exactly at the same time as the speed increased there was an altitude dip, which meant that at that point there was quite some loss of control. "The plane, which has only been in operation since August 15, was carrying 181 passengers as well as six cabin crew members and two pilots, bound for Pangkal Pinang on the Indonesian island of Bangka.
Former US National Transportation Safety Board air crash investigator and CNN aviation analyst Peter Goelz told CNN the data clearly showed issues with both the speed and altitude of the plane." There is something obviously wrong in both the air speed and the altitude which would point to the flight control systems," he said. "These are fly-by-wire systems [on the 737? who knew? - Airbubba] -- highly automated -- and pilots may not be able to troubleshoot failures in a timely manner."
Butterworth-Hayes said that given that the plane was only two months old, the reason behind the crash was "very unlikely" to be a mechanical fault. "Airplanes don't just fall out of the sky," he said. "I can't think of any mechanical issue apart from a sudden, unexplained loss of engine power (or)complete electrical failure. It's far more likely to be an external event."He suggests that an environmental issue is to blame -- such as a microburst, or the plane hitting something like a flock of birds."Microbursts are very difficult to detect -- they're a sudden down-rush of wind, like a vortex and you can't really see it -- you hit it, suddenly your aircraft isn't performing how it should do, you start doing all sorts of recovery motions and then it's too late."