the early days of almost every airliner crash reveal mysteries and conflicting accounts.

There are two primary types of turbulence generated by a heavy plane. The first type is turbulence from the engines and the other is wingtip vortices. The wake turbulence generated by a 747 is incredibly powerful. Each engine is producing over 40,000 pounds of thrust at takeoff. That's a lot of power.

Wingtip vortices can be very powerful as well, with the strength increasing with aircraft weight and during takeoffs and landings. Essentially, a wingtip vortex is like a horizontal tornado coming off of each wingtip rotating towards the fuselage. Vortices can linger for some time after takeoff. They normally descend below the plane's flight path spread horizontally. I remember an airshow pilot back in the 1980s who did an excellent demonstration of the power of vortices. He had smoke generators mounted on the wingtips of his plane, a WWII Hawker Sea Fury. That's a small plane compared to an airliner but the vortices lingered for a minute or more. Those coming off of a 747 would be much more powerful and could linger for a longer time.

It's possible that the Airbus flew through either the wake turbulence or a vortex. Of the two, I suspect a vortex would be more dangerous. If it did hit a vortex, it's possible that the vertical stabilizer was overstressed and ripped from the plane, rendering the plane uncontrollable and leading to the breakup. It'd be a freak accident for sure but it is possible, especially if there was some corrosion or other problem at the attach points. You're right, it couldn't happen at a worse time for the airline industry.

I'm not trying to say that sabotage or terrorism wasn't responsible for the crash. All I'm trying to do is come up with a rational explaination that fits with the known evidence. To date, no evidence that I've seen indicates something other than "natural" causes.