Smot911
"Does it really take a week to analyze possible explosive traces, or is somebody buying time?"
Lockerbie: they found PETN and other tracks after a week.
UTA-772: a week or more (investigation in France).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UTA_Flight_772
IIRC in both cases investigators also found the parts of timer.
Both cases require hundreds of soldiers to collect all possible parts, in second case investigation says they collect 15 tons of debris to check the explosive traces.
However, despite we are in 2015 the basic components of explosives are the same (like PETN). There are more sophisticated explosives, but hardly available for terrorists I think.
Anyway, there is a list if someone want search similarities or differences.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeli...ombing_attacks