Whoa, Silver. Hold the horses, guys.
The Wall St Journal article provides slightly more background than the selectively quoted NZ Herald report linked above.
Wall Street Journal Report
After initial efforts failed to retrieve data from the plane's recorders, French air-crash investigators decided to send them off to Honeywell international Inc., which made the devices. But an ongoing criminal probe of the crash delayed that transfer by a number of weeks, according to people familiar with the details. At this point, Honeywell experts don't expect to receive the recorders until the first week in January. A Honeywell spokeswoman said the company hasn't received the recorders and referred calls to investigators
Basically, the reason no useful information has been gleaned, is that in all likelihood,
it hasn't been downloaded by Honeywell yet.
It would be appreciated if folk keen to post info would take a few seconds to read it and realize that it is non-info before hitting the "submit" button.
And for those that can't wait, or take everything posted here as gospel, take a bit of trouble to quote correctly.
Why quote the NZ Herald when the source is actually slightly different?
"...because the twin-engine A320 was considered a workhorse..."
becomes
"...- because the twin-engine A320 is a workhorse of airlines... when you look to the original article.
(Minor niggly point, maybe, but apparently important.)
Final note, you (or I, anyway) have to be a little circumspect when reading media reports with wording like
according to people familiar with the details.
If they can't reveal the source, or think it unimportant - and I imagine the Wall St Journal
should be fairly reputable - then the source should really be considered as irrelevant.
It's reportage for the sake of it.
Move along, please, nothing to see here....
[edited for source correction]