Okay - heres a long shot and if its jumping to conclusions before the full report sorry.
Take off 7pm, three pilot crew one captain, two f.o,s probably Air France cadet system pilots.( nothing wrong with that but bet they probably have never been upside down in an aircraft let alone a big one hence the usual degradation in handling skills that modern aviation teaches)
Captain goes back shortly after take- off to first class or what ever rest they use, F/Os left in charge.
jet hits some cb's , maybe painting on radar, maybe not.
For one reason or another - all of which have been covered, jet reverts to alternate law, unreliable airspeed actions required ( memory items ) as A/P and A/T have disconnected.
Still in bumps, PF - who I would assume should be in the RHS... but maybe not....very low buffet margins @ F350. Speed tape dancing up and back.. maybe ...bearing in mind that depending on the sort of protection remaining any thing is possible with the pitch /bank/altitude/speed and thrust levers.
In attempt to control aircraft, jet is overhandled ( have seen it before with pilots "wanting to fix something'...
exacerbate situation and loose control. Jet breaks up at some point.
Jet aircraft in spiral dive or simliar, ROD works out to be about 12 000 FPM ( based on B707 loss of control over East Sale - hit water from 6000 feet in about 25 secs after demo of VMCG loss of control. yaw rate enough to shear off inboard engine and take out #4.
They managed to get a may day out ... just ..
So may have these guys but who was listening? , and besides with the yaw and pitch rates I'm not so sure you might have thought more about getting back on the rails first.
All speculation but how come AIRBUS have just put out a bulletin related to unreliable airspeed flight and its importance.
Yes granted may have been environmental initial cause but if I thought that lightening and thunderstorm penetration would result in this occurence being any greater than 1 x10-9 then I would not still be sitting in a cockpit?
Which I have done on both B707/777 and Airbus 320/343.345 types for 13000 hours.
I have ultimate confidence in the machinery - it is the human side that bothers me now with the increasing reliance on automation to make ones job easy ... right up to when it checks out and says handing over....!!
Not to speak ill of the dead but this is becoming all too common.
Ready for all incoming now... If I am wrong I will retract all of this conjecture.. just seems plausible to me...
W