Most of the speculation on the reason for the AF447 disappearance is based on two things:
- satellite images
- ACARS messages
With respect to the last one: Many of you think, that theses messages can provide a "sequence of events".
But is this really possible?
ACARS has not been designed as a "real time monitoring system". So, as I have no detailed knowledge about the ACARS implementation on the A330, I would have some questions before "abusing" ACARS as this:
- What is the usual internal sampling rate of the ACARS system? How often does it read out the error memory of the respective systems?
- How often does it usually send messages? Does it send messages as soon as a new system error appears? What's the time lag between error occurence and error message sent via ACARS?
- Can one message contain multiple errors? Or will each error transmitted in a separate message?
To put it the other way round:
If e.g. 10 errors would appear simultaneously, how would ACARS deal with that?
Assuming that each error would be send in a separate message, how long does it take to send all these messages?
Is the time stamp on these messages, the time when the message was sent or the time when the respective error occured?
Thanks in advance,
ihg