I remember flying Varig from Europe to Rio in 2001 on a MD11, it was about the same time of year and we had an incident in or around the ITCZ.
I was partly sleeping at the time, but I woke up with a start with people and paraphernalia flying around the cabin and me being held in place by my seat belt. This wasn't just free fall, we went down ! After a period of about 5 seconds (seemed like an eternity), there was one hell of a bang and the aircraft went careering upwards. I remember looking out of the window and seeing the wing nav lights going up past my field of view, the wings must have resembled a "V" shape, then it all steadied out again, and cabin staff and pax patched each other up.
We carried on to Rio though without any divert - so there is some serious wx in the ITCZ this time of year.
My question(s), if anyone can answer it (them).
I'm in the field of Aviation Satellite comms and whilst I know the hardware and RF methods, I'm at a loss to know what data is actually transmitted.
So, if the ACARS message regarding the Electrical Malfunction (and "possible" cabin de-pressurisation) was received, would it not be normal practice to add a few more bytes of data and include the a/c position ?
If the ACARS was automatically generated due to an anomaly in the A/C systems, I would have thought a position report would have been a part of the sent datagram for safety reasons ?
Is there a required standard format for content of ACARS messages, or is it left up to the company in question ?