Based on wreckage location - Air Algerie impacted by a mesoscale convective system

Crash Site of Air Algerie 5017 near the Burkina Faso/Mali Border 

Based on where the flight crashed today (Northern Burkina Faso/Southern Mali), it seems that the mesoscale convective system which had been in northern Burkina Faso may have played a major role in the accident.  The path of the aircraft seems 

Satellite Precipitation rate image at 0145 UTC Thursday morning (July 24)

to have been across the mesoscale convective system which was moving to the west.  The only way to avoid it would have bee to fly to the west or to the east around the storm, which would increase the travel time but would have been much safer.

This particular storm definitely had lightning with it, and as I stated in the earlier blog that it probably had significant amounts of ice and strong vertical updrafts.  Another danger is super-cooled liquid water.  Water normally freezes at 32F but it is possible for water in thunderstorms to remain as liquid well below 32F to nearly -40F.   The problem is that if this water should land on a piece of metal it will immediately freeze and cause ice to build up.   This is one important reason why to avoid deep thunderstorms.

A very important instrument on all planes is the pitot tube, which you often see if you look closely at aircraft.

Pitot Tube

 It provides important information about airspeed and how fast the plane is going.  If this instrument were get supercooled water on it and ice were to build up, it would very likely give a false sense of how fast the plane is going.  This is what happened in the case of several years ago (2009) when an Air France Jet flew into thunderstorms when traveling from Brazil to France.  The pilots did not know how fast the plane was going, and the plane (Airbus 330)  stalled and then fell some 35,000-39,000 feet to the ocean surface.  This has happened on a number of aircraft encountering thunderstorms.
http://www.aviationtoday.com/regions/usa/More-Pitot-Tube-Incidents-Revealed_72414.html#.U9LKRYBdUjA

Pitot Tube on a commercial jet

Organized West African Mesoscale Convective systems, grow very deep (up to 50,000 ft) and so they may impossible to fly over in a commercial jet.  Because they have lots of lightning, ice, strong updrafts and potentially supercooled water they should be avoided at all cost.  I am not sure why this plane was given a flight path which took it right into the heart of one of these systems as I am sure that forecasters were aware of it.  Clearly the pilots tried to deviate but maybe did not understand the largeness of this system and did not deviate far enough.    The Black box will probably yield useful information about what went wrong, but I feel very sad that the passengers had to encounter such a weather system.

It is quite a paradox, given that the rain has been below normal in many areas of West Africa and the types of systems that probably downed this plane are the ones that give life saving rains to the farmers in West Africa.  Except there have not been many of them this year -- thus far, with cities such as Dakar not having received any rain as of yet.

Again, the technology to avoid such weather hazards currently exist but is not deployed in a meaningful way in West Africa.  

Addition at 905 PM
There was discussion about a dust storm in the region.  However, dust will be located much closer to the ground and would definitely be located at less than 15,000 feet.  It seems improbable that dust was the cause of the crash unless the pilots were flying very low and dust somehow caused their engines to stall.  The black box will provide the best evidence based on their altitude.