I've seen tops above 60,000 ft at the equator.
Accidental penetration of shorter columns can be violent. On the A310, you can loose both tat probes and loose Sat for a time with ice. This happened to us once going through a benign looking arm of weather a hundred miles from a typhoon near Borneo. The yaw dampers popped off followed by the autopilot. The Airbus autothrottles went bezerk so had to disconnect those. All airspeed was lost. It got very noisy from HAL screaming about wind shear and other incorrect imagined problems. All three Altimeters disagreed so we didn't know which was right. A few minutes later in clear wx everything came back. Like nothing happened!
My theory: I never had this happen in any boeing or douglas aircraft. I beleive airbus probe heating is occasionally weak (again, just compared to boeing.) I feel airbus automation actually increases pilot workload (AW&ST) Aug 1995, which is of course, exactly the opposite of how this equipment was originally marketed.
Composite tails are a concern also. FAA certification does not require full deflection capability in both directions I was told as was the case with AAL A300 in New York attributed to pilot error. Old Boeing iron however, has this capability: engineering far exceeding the minimum FAA certification specification. A few 747 era Boeings and DC-8's survived jet upsets that resulted in supersonic dives. I'm not sure todays composite airframes could do it? Are you?
These are just my opinions only. I never flew the A330.
Crunch - Out