There is a manifest. I have no doubt that the American press and the Domincan press have gone through the manifest and like I have stated no one has found anything amiss about any of the passengers.
a) Baggage bomb. This was my first guess when it blew up. Why pick this flight? Timing, and Dominicans take a lot of random stuff home with them.
This was an international flight, so that means every person who checked luggage had to be checked with the manifest. That was mandated by the FAA before 9/11.
Again any good reporter could look into the background of every passenger to see if anything was amiss. I am sure by now someone would have come up with something.
JMO, but the shoebomber #2 theory doesn't hold up IMHO. Now that is not to say there could have been a breech on the ground or with the ground crew and should be looked into and also that Flight 587 could have been brought down by mechanical problems(a gasp is audibly heard by the conspiracy contingent on FR).
This was an international flight, so that means every person who checked luggage had to be checked with the manifest. That was mandated by the FAA before 9/11.One of the big questions is "Is bag-matching a sham?"
Many people THINK the airlines now have to x-ray or manually inspect all checked luggage now. This is not true. Airlines are free to substitute bag matching for actually inspecting checked bags. In other words, they can do NOTHING more than make sure you and your bag are both on the airplane. This, of course, does NOTHING to stop suicide bombers or people getting duped into carrying a bag for someone else. And there is an example of each: Pan Am 103 was bombed with a device hidden in a stereo, carried by an unwitting accomplice, and we have the shoe bomber, ready to die an even more gruesome death than everyone else in the plane.
Airline security is a JOKE, and a coverup of AA587 being bombed keeps the airline customers from demanding the joke be stopped. That is the issue.