deSitter,
jcjeant - that's right - the great unknown in all of this is the behavior of composite structures under atypical stresses - there are many competing models, often mutually wildly divergent, all highly non-linear, of composite failure under stress.
Did you care to have a look at the wreckage photos of BEA's second report?
If you had done so you would have noticed that it was primarily the METAL support structure that broke not the composites. In contrary the composites survived the loads much better than the 'tin' (as is often the case btw.).
That makes any philosophying about the strength of composites obsolete.
Sorry if I sound a bit rude but it starts to get annoying having unfounded generalisation (which oviously does not apply in this case) repeated over and over again.
jcjeant,
.. as a consequence of the loss of VS in flight is that you get a plane that is no more controllable ... what appears to have been the case for AF447
If an airliner loses its 'feathers', the result will very likely not be a 'pancake' impact at 150kts vertically and 50kts forward but a high speed forward impact.
AA587 impacted in a spiral dive, not flat btw.