Dutch experts say Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 broke up in mid-air after being hit by "numerous objects" that "pierced the plane at high velocity".
A report released by the Dutch Safety Board said there was "no evidence of technical or human error".
A BBC correspondent says this evidence is consistent with the plane being struck by shrapnel from a missile.
The plane was flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur when it crashed in rebel-held territory eastern Ukraine in July.
All 298 people on board, most of them from the Netherlands, died when the plane came down, amid reports it was shot down by pro-Russian rebels.
Dutch aviation investigators relied on information from the black box flight data recorders, air traffic control, satellite images and photos from the scene to compile the preliminary report.
Analysis: Richard Westcott, Transport correspondent
This report doesn't say flight MH17 was knocked from the sky by a missile. But it pretty much rules out anything else.
There were no emergencies on board, no mechanical problems, the pilots didn't make any mistakes.
Instead, it talks about the plane being punctured by "high-velocity objects", which is consistent with how the BUK missile system works (that's the system many suspect was responsible). They don't actually hit the target, they explode nearby and pepper it with shrapnel for maximum damage.
But all of this doesn't answer the critical question. Who fired the missile?
Both sides in this conflict use the same weapon. To find out who made this terrible mistake, they need to determine where on the ground the missile was actually launched from. And one expert told me that they should eventually be able to work that out with a combination of radar data and evidence from the scene.
There is one very sobering fact also highlighted in this report. Three other, very large commercial airliners flew over the same area at around the same time.
