I have experienced tha bad side of the "coffin corner" as a passenger on an Focker-100 over 10 years ago. Flying as high as we could to avoid building storms. Nasty bending jet stream (or possibly convective drafts) evidently caused a stall and enormormous uncontolled "plunge" yet with little or no change to pitch and roll... just a straight-down flat free fall. The extreme pos/neg g-forces through the two falls and subsequent recoveries were an terrifying experience. Fortunately most people had seatbelts on but those who did not were part of the ceiling. And yes, people flying around in the cabin injure the people who are properly belted in their seats... as do food carts and laptop PCs. Experience from reading the posts and news accounts on the 330 incident sounds familiar.
Had read that the 787 will have LIDAR that will help with CAT. Doppler is obviously no help without any particles to reflect in clear air, but I thought NASA was working on better CAT detection and the 787 would have some advances in this (of course, the same radar could be put in other aircraft so guess maybe that was just marketing hype).
Anyway, hope people recover and have no doubt that the QF (FD and CC) did a good job. Shame Qantas is getting bagged for this in the media. If it turns out to purely be a CAT-induced upset then that has nothing to do with the airline quality.
However... no doubt the media experts will conclude that obviously putting 300+ people in an A320 may cause some weight and balance issues!!!
