Exactly right. They found in the maintenance records for this plane that 7 years ago it got caught in a rather severe wind shear/turbulence which may have caused structural damage, that went undetected.
* We've seen incidents in the past where wind shears have caused planes to slam into the ground (crash during takeoff or landing)) or land hard
* We've seen incidents in the past where counterfeit plane parts have caused engine failure
* We've seen incidents in the past where bad maintenance (such as lack of lubrication on the tail corkscrew on the MD80) or lack of maintenance due to improper manufacturer specification, caused structural failure. Alaska Airlines had this problem a few years back, which caused the FAA to ground EVERY MD80 in service. Ironically, this problem happened over the course of 10 years and it took the FAA and the manufacturer that long to find it. Even though there were MANY complaints of loss of control over that airplane due to the corkscrew.
So before everyone puts on their tinfoil hats (probably too late for that) and blames this one on terrorism, we've seen in the pat where bad maintenance, wind shear, wake turbulence and more have caused airline accidents.
As soon as I heard it was an Airbus 300, I *knew* this was either engine or structural failure. These planes along with the Airbus A320 have *lousy* safety records. Frankly, Airbus can't build a plane. Anytime I've been booked on an Airbus (EU Built CRAP!) I've gotten my flight switched to another plane.
It wasn't a bomb/terrorist attack ...
It was just bad maintenance on that plane.