@Barbies BF
Surely, under normal circumstances, one would be doing a whole load of things to try and improve the situation. So why waste time doing something that plainly will NOT improve the situation.
Maybe it was such awful turb that he felt that they might not make it through and that therefore it might be helpful to ensure that some details of the aircrafts plight are known.
Or as it has been said to be off 0200Z could have been a standard AF proc at the entry at Oceanic Airspace, they would have to comment on that. As far as I know, this report has been cited with diferent wording throughout the week and there had not been any official reference as to it's real value....
Everthing dealing with it seems more or less speculative IMHO