My friend's take on it. He's a design engineer for Boeing and used to work for Airbus.
"What d'ya reckon? You buy the lightning theory?"
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"Very remote chance it was a direct lightening strike that caused it, the aircraft is designed to withstand that hit and their are 2 other auxiliary back-ups if power loss occurs due to a strike.
Looks like it was some kind of major turbulence issue coupled with electrical faults, it may have went into a nose dive at 35,000 feet and by the time the crew could get it together they were right in the middle of the lower lying storm. No black box likely to be recovered as they don't even know where it went down so they may never fully know."