Wow. Harsh.
What I heard tonight was that planes fly through what this plane flew through all the time without disappearing.
They are thinking bomb on board.
There's only three kinds of turbulence: light, moderate, and severe. I only encountered moderate turbulence once. (I really didn't think it was that bad, but that's what the folks ahead of me were calling it.) When I did, the non-pilot who was riding with me kissed the ground after we landed. These guys supposedly encountered severe turbulence; and then the bomb went off, I guess.
ML/NJ
There may be another explanation that the media hasn’t picked up on. There have been known control issues with the Airbus 330. A Qantas 330 experienced control issues from a faulty air data inertial reference unit (ADIRU) last October. Here is a link to the article;
http://www.eturbonews.com/5633/qf72-incident-may-lead-grounding-airbus-a330-300-models
Here is another article from Aviation Week on the same incident:
http://www.aviationweek.com/aw/generic/story_channel.jsp?channel=comm&id=news/FLIGHT10148.xml