Turbulence from another jet nor pressure placed on the rudder by the pilots should have been enough to snap off the tail of Flight 587, claim aviation experts.
This raises the prospect that something was wrong with the plane before it left the ground.
The American Airlines Airbus A300 crashed into a New York neighbourhood, shortly after taking off from Kennedy Airport for the Dominican Republic.
"I think there was a pre-existing structural problem with the tail," said Mr Greg Feith, a former National Transportation Safety Board investigator.
"It was going to fail regardless. It just so happened the conditions were right."
The cause of the crash has not been determined, but investigators have focused on the jetliner's tail assembly, which came off sometime before the crash.
The Federal Aviation Administration ordered airlines to immediately inspect the tail assemblies of their Airbus A300-600 and A310 planes.
American and two cargo carriers, FedEx and United Parcel Service, have about 135 of the jets in their fleets. The FAA say no conclusions have been reached about whether the tail was related to the accident, but called the inspections a prudent move.
Several aviation experts have suggested that there was some unseen weakness in the tail assembly. The tail fin was held to the fuselage by six fittings. Maintenance records indicate that one of the fittings had to be repaired by the manufacturer before the plane was delivered to American Airlines in 1988.
The problems could have dated from 1994, when the jet was severely shaken by air turbulence, injuring 47 people. The plane was inspected following the incident.
"That's where the investigation really has to start," Mr Feith said. "It may be the inspection was just a visible inspection. They're not going to be looking inside that fin area, they're going to be looking for obvious damage. Something could have happened that, although it didn't immediately fail the tail at that point, did set up a fail scenario."
PA