(CNN) -- It's been little more than a week since an Air France jet crashed into the Atlantic Ocean, bringing a horrific end to the lives of the 228 people aboard.
Recovery efforts have found several items confirmed to have come from Air France Flight 447.
But the mystery surrounding Flight 447 may drag on for a great while.
The Airbus A330-200 is considered an exceptionally safe plane, so why was there no signal from the pilots of a crisis? Planes, particularly sophisticated craft like the Airbus, are built to withstand severe storms like the one Flight 447 is believed to have confronted.
The plane has numerous electrical backup systems, so when one thing goes wrong, another switches on to compensate. Did all those systems fail?
The plane's data recorder, which might help answer that, is presumably at the bottom of the ocean.
These unknowns create a stomach-turning question: If no one knows how this happened, can and will it happen again?
For the past week, experts have offered theories, including weighing in on whether it's possible foul play was at work.
"As an investigator, until you know exactly what caused it, you need to leave everything on the table. I wouldn't rule it [foul play] out," said Capt. John Cox, a veteran major-airline pilot who has extensive expertise in global air safety. "But there's been nothing that shows me that it would be a prime suspect." 
Watch Cox describe in detail what might have downed Flight 447 »
Autopsies performed on bodies recovered from the Atlantic could provide clues, said Mary Schiavo, a former inspector general for the U.S. Department of Transportation.
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Schiavo, who has been an outspoken critic of the Federal Aviation Administration, told CNN last week that investigators would be able to discern if there was an explosion from possible residue on the bodies or other items. If water is found in the lungs of victims, investigators would know the plane went down intact.
Cox, an expert in flight safety auditing who has flown the Airbus A320 and has flown the A330 simulator, said he suspects, as do other flying experts, that weather was not the single cause of the disaster. It was most likely a series of events, he said in an interview on CNN's "American Morning" on Monday.
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