punkalouver,
A small aside.
Your item 5 is a classic example of how easy it is to mis-quote and then mis-translate when working out of context.
Page 16 from the BEA document, the complete sentence:
"La soute électronique contenant la plupart des calculateurs de vol, située sous le poste de pilotage, a été totalement détruite."
That translates to:
"The electronics bay, which contains most of the flight control computers and is located underneath the cockpit, was totally destroyed."
That in turn translates to the bay itself being totally smashed up, but not necessarily to the computers themselves being totally destroyed (I've seen results of crashes...). So if e.g., somebody needed to access data inside those computers it might have been entirely feasible.
In this case it's not relevant to the report, but I expect you can see where it could have mattered elsewhere.
I've now printed the French report and saved your translation from the forum with cut-and-paste.
But maybe you can mail me a cleaner version of your translation (formatting-wise) so I can add my corrections in there and bounce it back?
PM ?
Christian