Lets get this straight..... Other than causing an aircraft to bounce all over the place and be harder to control, WAKE TURBULENTS will NOT cause a commercial sized aircraft to break up.
All aircraft certified by the FAA/JAA are certified to 9g gust criteria and most will probably survive more than that. Lets get real here, aircraft fly into heavy turbulents all the time and people not seat belted in get flung all over the place. These turbulents are every bit as strong, in fact stronger, than wake turbulents.
There is a post here on PPRUNE talking about the 757 on approach a few months ago that not only exceeded the flaps 20 approach speeds by 100+ kts, they pitched the aircraft up then down repeatedly. In other words they super loaded the airframe both positively and negatively and nothing came off.
Though I don't fly I have been in many many deep stalls in different aircraft and watched what the pilot was doing and listened to the noises the aircraft were making. Nothing short of being real old or running into the ground at high speed will in most cases cause an aircraft to break up.
