act700,
Actually I was thinking of the recent in-flight upset caused by the air data computers,(or ADIRU to be pedantic) but this "man-made" one wasn't too pretty either.
skol, Most , in fact probably all airlines ( including I imagine XL in Germany ) have the data sent out , but in some cases I believe it is sent after the aircraft is parked with parking brake set or engines shut down, which wouldn't have worked too well in this case. I believe other systems send data constantly in real time. As loose rivets said, in this day & age I can have a simulated motor race in real time with a teenager in Tokyo, so we really shouldn't be dependant on fishing bits of orange metal from 35m depth in the Med to know what has happened.