As the investigation continued Friday into what caused an EgyptAir flight from Paris to Cairo to suddenly and violently plunge from the sky

As the investigation continued Friday into what caused an EgyptAir flight from Paris to Cairo to suddenly and violently plunge from the sky, the discovery of the debris allowed search crews to home in on the location of the crash — an area about 180 miles north of Alexandria, Egypt — even as its cause remained a mystery and the subject of intense speculation.

Data that was transmitted from the aircraft to operators on the ground, published Friday by a respected aviation journal, revealed a rapid loss of control, with alarms and computer-system failures in the seconds before the plane was lost from radar.

No bulk wreckage has been found, and the parts of the aircraft most likely to provide clues for investigators — including the voice and data recorders — are also the ones most likely to quickly sink to the seafloor, The New York Times reported.

An Egyptian official has said that investigators consider terrorism to be one possible cause of the disaster, but no terrorist group has claimed responsibility. Officials cautioned that there was no direct evidence to suggest a bomb aboard the plane, or any other deliberate act of sabotage.

The plane, a twin-engine Airbus A320 jet, went down Thursday while flying through a cloudless night sky en route to Cairo from Paris.

EgyptAir Flight 804, en route from Paris to Cairo, disappeared from radar over the Mediterranean Sea on Thursday morning after it abruptly turned and dropped in altitude.

Representatives of Airbus and the Federal Aviation Administration said they could not confirm the authenticity of the technical signals. Dina El-Fouly, a spokeswoman for EgyptAir, declined to comment on the apparently leaked data.

“We cannot say anything, because we have already launched a committee to investigate the crash,” she said. “It hasn’t told us anything until now.”