[The Magical Mischief Tour]

They were saying it was a lateral force, but he also said the plane experienced another acceleration at the same time, I think vertical was what he said.

[LTCJ]

Purely speculation but from what you're telling me I'd expect that it was +0.8g vertical and +/-0.3g lateral.

While 0.3g's laterally is a lot, with normal onset it is no where near enough to rip the vertical off a healthy airplane. If there were other prior damage it might do it. There have been questions about design load spectra on an unidentified Airbus type but I can't know if is a contributing factor here.

So far the most excessive thing I've seen is the amount of talking the NTSB is doing at this stage of the investigation. Now THAT's extraordinary.