Maybe a miracle for some good news from this time.
Weather radar looked pretty horrific this morning.

No Caution Terrain, this will be plastered all over the major networks and cable news for months! Just enough to BS people out of the truth that flying in an airliner is statistically the safest thing they'll ever do.

Capt had 6,100tt and the FO had 2,215. So let's not start that.
They requested a deviation for severe turbulence, then contact was lost. Looks like they got into a cell or an area of cells and could have stalled.
Not good.

Indonesia is one of the worst places to fly in the world. Weather is always horrible, and ATC is worse.
Capt had 6,100tt and the FO had 2,215 and I would guess most of their time would be in the A320.
Yes CRM and safety are a big problem in that region, but they haven't even found the plane yet so I would say let's keep it civil.

A bit premature to title this thread as a "crash" when they haven't found a crash-site or any wreckage.

13 hours later.. we can agree they're not circling around.

Weather looked horrendous, some pretty large cells throughout the entire flat path

The media is saying they requested a climb from 320 up to 380.

We don't (yet) know how heavy they were, how much fuel they had, etc, but can any of you guys with lots of A320 time tell us how much stall margin you typically have, half way through a 3hr. flight, at FL380?

Will the A320 go right up there immediately after takeoff, with 168 pax and 3+hrs. fuel on board? I doubt it, since they were at 320 in the first place, but I'd like to hear more about that from some A320 pilots.

I go through close to there at 380 all the time. I hate it. The thing that gets you the most are the buildups that aren't raining yet. Middle of the night plugging along and you just get the snot kicked out of you from something you can't see or paint.

I've had guys want to go higher(insane) which puts you a lot closer to upset if you run into the top of one of those buildups. I'd rather stay lower and try to weave with a greater margin.

Looking at a radar shot, it looked like there were some massive buildups.