[gandalftb]

Generally yes, but at that altitude an increase in speed above .8 mach without trimming causes a nose up pitch, which is easily corrected manually. If not, a stall occurs, over-correcting by nose down and gaining speed works fine if your speed indicators are correct and the pilot believes them.

That's the issue here, were the pilots able to correct from a likely stall and how could a stall have happened? Not many other ways for this plane to come apart other than over-speeding due to bad indicators and a steep dive. It is known that the airframe catastrophically depressurized about 3 minutes after the 24 error messages went out. It happened so fast that the pilots never sent an emegency signal.

[UCANSEE2]

In the case of the Airbus (and many other airplanes), wing/body design is a compromise of many factors.

The air at FL50 is very thin. At higher speeds, drag is increased. Drag that brings the nose up.

Gadalftb is correct, in this situation,with this airframe, more power/speed without proper retrimming, could cause a stall.