Air Asia disaster

The plane did not break up due to turbulence, overspeed or mismanaged stall recovery. It appears to have hit the water either in a flat spin or tail first (which is more likely). So it appears they were more afraid of turbulence and over speed conditions and trusted their faulty airspeed indications when actually they were going very slowly and the wings were losing lift but they failed to recognize the stall and correctly recover from it despite the great altitude giving them plenty of time.

Service ceiling is defined as the altitude at which the plane is unable to maintain a positive rate of climb at a certain minimum rate. It does not mean that if a thunderstorm lifts it higher anything stops working. Its still a plane, just not fully controllable and now dealing with a torrent of water on wings and perhaps in the engines.

Once out of the storm the skin my be a bit wringled but everything should be operating. Its that they believed they were risking an overspeed condition and should not over stress the control surfaces.