The Air France Press Release #12 cited by Mercenary Pilot in currently post #397 and available
directly has some interesting points, most notably number 2:
2) Starting in May 2008 Air France experienced incidents involving a loss of airspeed data in flight, in cruise phase on A340s and A330s. These incidents were analysed with Airbus as resulting from pitot probe icing for a few minutes, after which the phenomenon disappeared. Discussions subsequently took place with the manufacturer. Air France asked for a solution which would reduce or eliminate the occurrence of these incidents. In response to these requests, the manufacturer indicated that the probe model recommended for the A320 was not designed to prevent such incidents which took place at cruise levels, and reiterated the operational procedures well-known to the crews.
In the first quarter of 2009 laboratory tests suggested, however, that the new probe could represent a valuable improvement to reduce the incidence of high altitude airspeed discrepancy resulting from pitot probe icing, and an in service evaluation in real flight conditions was proposed by Airbus. Without waiting for the in service evaluation, Air France decided to replace all its probes and the programme was launched on 27 April 2009.
This means:
A. Air France has had a significant number of A330/340 pitot probe icing events in the past year, and presumably has a very good idea of the sequence of ACARS messages that they generate. Do the ACARS messages generated by AF447 look anything like the ones in AF's possession from prior cases of pitot probe icing? What about other carriers?
B. Air France's solution to this problem was to adopt fleetwide the probes developed to solve water ingress problems on the A320 before they could be evaluated outside the laboratory, and in spite of the manufacturer's claim that the design was not made to address this problem. So, even if the 'A320 probe' was fitted to AF447, there's no guarantee it would have done something.
C. The OEM's proposed 'solution' to pitot icing, reiterated by the operator, was/is to follow the procedures outlined for unreliable airspeed.
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I'll let you folks do the speculation.