I'm going to speculate and predict what happened to Asiana QZ8501. [View all]

[A HERETIC I AM]

Same basic circumstance as Air France 447 in that the pilot climbed (edit to add) and TURNED (or apparently asked for permission to) into a severe weather front (trying to avoid it) with tops exceeding 45,000 and then got conflicting/inaccurate airspeed/attitude/altitude readings.

I'm going to speculate that Airbus has not completely addressed the Pitot tube issue that was determined to be the primary cause of AF 447. Those pilots had no idea the were in a stall and their aircraft hit the water with less than 150 kts forward speed but over 150 kts vertical (if my memory serves me from an article I read a while back). They had no idea they were simply falling out of the sky.

I'm betting that's what happened. They'll find what's left of the aircraft in the coming days and I'll wager an hours pay the circumstances will be remarkably similar.