Other experts raised the possibility of pilot error. While Airbus aircraft are equipped with sophisticated software designed to help keep the plane flying within safe parameters, pilots must still maintain close attention to factors like speed, air temperature and altitude.

A plane that was fully loaded with passengers and fuel, ascending too rapidly through the warm desert air, might have risked an aerodynamic stall, some analysts said. Depending on the speed of the descent, the aircraft might have been ripped apart as it tumbled toward the ground.

Older aircraft in particular are vulnerable on very rare occasions to structural failure during ascent, as the passenger cabin is pressurized with more air inside than outside. Each time the cabin is pressurized, it is being slightly pushed outward like a balloon, and that puts stress on the fuselage.

The most famous recent crash linked to this problem was a China Airlines Boeing 747-200 that broke into several pieces during the last stages of its ascent to 35,000 feet on a flight from Taipei to Hong Kong on May 25, 2002. The same aircraft had struck its tail when the pilot took off too steeply in 1980, causing a crack near the back of the fuselage that was later poorly repaired with a series of rivets. A Taiwan government analysis of aircraft parts retrieved from the seafloor showed that metal in the vicinity of the crack had suffered fatigue and then failed; the government then labeled failure of the rear fuselage as the probable cause of the crash, which killed all 225 people aboard.

Analysts also left open the possibility of sabotage or some other deliberate act in Saturday’s crash — a scenario that gained currency just hours after the crash, when a Sinai militant group affiliated with the Islamic State claimed responsibility.

While most analysts remain skeptical that Islamic State militants in the area possess missiles with sufficient range to strike aircraft flying at cruising altitudes, experts said they could not rule out the possibility of a more conventional form of terrorism.