For those questioning depressurization, having experienced a 25 and 40K chamber run, the times of useful conciousness, in my experience, were far in excess the published figures. However, a bit of adrenalin probably less. At 30K, I would estimate TOC to be measured in minutes; although a bit giggly and getting a bit of a headache, I knew where I was and what I was doing. I could put my own mask on after 60 seconds when asked, although my writing went to rats.
I think any pilot in that circumstance would be focussing on company or aircraft specific procedures, typically one person flying the aircraft, whilst another dons the mask. Hand over control, repeat. If there was the sort of short period oscillation going on that has been seen in the mode S, it would have been a very difficult situation to manage. I think personally, I would be trying my damn best to disagnose the situation, through warning and caution or ECAM, trying to get the passenger area secure, communicating if you had chance. The fact that the aircraft seems to have undergone significant upset to the fight path without ATC communication is indicative of how serious it got, and quickly. I hope they find the QAR disks as it will have a wealth of information in there.
I dare say the engineers will have fracture analysts looking at the back end to figure out if this was fatigue related or something more sinister.