Shadoko:
In fact, I can't imagine this aircraft falling from 35000' to 0 keeping a "normal" attitude all along (and not attached passengers remaining in their seats*). Adding a storm, is this "flat" fall truly possible ?
Well, I may as well chime in (again).
Airspeed discrepancy in turb. Icing. Pilots quickly realise a stall is in progress and 'Alt law' in force. They pitch down to maintain airspeed, and manually control the throttles. Descending through the weather, they in theory may have levelled off a few times, but any pitch down would prodice a high-ish rate of decent. If the wings were iced then is that not akin to popping the lift dumpers?
So whatever the 'downward' speed, the aircraft still has forward motion, but despite recovering to 'level' flight a few times, the iced wings overcome available thrust and the drop cannot be reduced much.
Could it actually be described as a very hard ditching, with forward velocity possibly only about 250-300% of downward velocity IE still 'realtively fast in direction' but not to maintain flight.??