F14, totally agree with your theories
. If it was a coffin corner or pitot icing issue or any of the other failures speculated on here then why did the crew not communicate with a nearby aircraft on HF at the very least??
The Air India is as F14 says, a carbon copy: the squawk disapeared from radar, as did the AF447, no 7700 was picked up and ZERO mayday calls were made..
Guys, AirFrance is a very professional Airline, equipped with the latest aircraft and flight support. OK they insist on speaking French on the RT, but apart from that I have the highest confidence in the Operation, Training and Engineering.
They have literally 10s of thousands of Atlantic crossings. What we are looking at is a one off catastrophic event. In my mind there are two possibilities:-
1) Bomb
Would be interesting to see what France's Afghanistan deployment is. Air India is almost carbon copy of this accident.
2) Dangerous goods
Like the explosion on the SAA 747 last year, could cargo have caused damage to the airframe? or TWA800 fuel pumps? (4 hours into flight)