Was an air explosion the cause of the Adam Air plane disintegration?

The pieces of metal and other debris that were found on the beach elicited speculations from both experts and amateurs alike. Could an explosion have been the cause of the plane’s disaster?

However, chief of the Military Command at Pare-pare, Colonel Pranoto, rejected the theory that a bomb or a fire had caused the accident. His conclusion was based on the fact that none of the debris that was found here showed traces of fire. Besides, said Colonel Mustofa Adi Pranoto, debris from an explosion was usually recognizable by sharp or jagged points, which these did not have. For example, a seat passenger food tray that was found, was mangled but did not appear to have been in an explosion. The mangled pieces must have gone through some violent pressure, which is possible if the plane had disintegrated either upon impact on entering the water or indeed through extremely strong pressures of currents at the bottom of the sea. It is also most telling that the debris were found nearly 10 days after the accident, while no floating debris were detected on the days immediately after the accident.
This would indicate that the pieces had slowly surfaced from the bottom of the sea to finally beach on land.

If the plane had gone down into the deep trench at Mamuju where the large chunks of metal were detected by sonar, it could very well be that strong currents had driven the lighter pieces south to the beaches at Pare Pare and Barru.  Another indication that the accident had occurred in the waters of the Makassar Straits and that the plane had not exploded in the air, was that pieces would be scattered around a large radius over sea and land. But the fact is that until today, not one single piece of metal from the plane had been found on land, despite intensive search parties having combed nearby locations days earlier.    

In the latest developments, Indonesian Air Force planes reported having detected an oil spill in the middle of the sea. As the spill was said to be clean and not tainted by water, which is characteristic of jet fuel or avtur, it would appear that the fuel spill must have come from the missing Adam Air plane. Are searchers closer to finding the main fuselage of the doomed plane? The fact that no trace of any passenger had been found until today would indicate that the plane fuselage’s was lying at the bottom of the sea.

Setyo Rahardjo, Chief of the National Transportation Safety Board, told AP that the chances are small that the Boeing 737 had blown up because search and rescue teams had not found burnt wreckage or human remains since New Year's Day, when the Adam Air plane went missing.

"We have only found little pieces of aircraft which indicates the main body of the aircraft is at the bottom of the sea," Rahardjo told The Associated Press. "Until now no human bodies have been found."
The explosion option has been dropped from a list of three crash scenarios that still includes possibilities that the plane suffered a catastrophic structural failure and broke apart at 35,000 feet, or was damaged in severe weather. This was the first public speculation by aviation authorities, reported AP

Meanwhile, President Yudhoyono on his flight back from attending the ASEAN Summit in Cebu, in the Philippines, made special effort to stop-over in Manado to speak with and console relatives of the missing plane’s passengers. Here the President reiterated his earlier promise, that search efforts for the jetliner would continue until it was known what had happened to the passengers, and no time limit will be given to these efforts.