ilovepierre
One day, the lost will be found
I agree, perhaps started by a smoldering fire. It's shutting off ACARS that has me perplexed. It doesn't appear to be something that could be done in the cockpit and the Captain would have to go to a lot of work to shut it off.
MOO
There's two parts to ACARS. One in the cockpit, and one under a hatch somewhere else on the plane. The ACARS in the cockpit was disabled, but the other hard to get to one, wasn't. That's why the plane was still able to transmit partial pings to the satellites. That's what I read in earlier posts in this thread (or possibly the last one...). The entire ACARS system wasn't shut down like we all originally thought.