There is something I don't understand about the flight condition this aircraft is assumed to have gotten itself into.
From what I've read here and elsewhere it seems that if a transport pilot who is trying to climb finds that he is ascending at a high rate (say 9,000 fpm), with airspeed dropping, the reaction from the pilot (or Hal inthe case of Airbus) is to pull out all the stops and push the yoke or the sidestick forward as far as it will go and even adjust stabilizer trim to get more nose down pitch - right?
It seems to me that any pilot who has flown gliders in the past would just smile ear to ear (and maybe even throw the plane into a sharp turn so as to not lose the updraft) while adding power to ward off any possibility of a stall and wait to kick out of the updraft if it hasn't already dissipated before delivering the craft to an altitude near the max altitude for the type.
Are planes and people being lost in order to stay within ATC assigned altitude?