Jim Burin of the US-based Flight Safety Foundation said that although bad fuel could cause an airplane's engines to fail, the problems likely would be noticed and reported by the crew well in advance as the engines began to labor or misfire.
"I would expect some communication from the crew that we're having trouble," he said.
He added that initial reports from the crash scenes indicated that one plane's wreckage was spread out more widely than would usually be the case in a crash that was not preceded by an explosion.
Rafi Ron, former head of security at Israel's Ben Gurion Airport and now a security consultant in Washington, DC, said he was convinced it was terrorism.
"The timing indicates that this is probably a coordinated attack," Ron said.
"There was probably something on board that let the pilots to push the distress signal or submit a verbal signal," Ron said. "In my assumption, that must have been the result of a terrorist on board."
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