ACARS & Hydraulics?
My expertise is in aircraft engines (20+ years gas turbines) , but not airframes.
A question for those with real expertise with ACARS: Would it report any problems with the hydraulic systems? It would seem to be fairly safe to assume that all hydraulic lines leading to the rudder actuators would have been severed upon loss of the vertical stabilizer. Since ACARS did not mention anything related to hydraulics in its stream of error messages, would it then be reasonable to assume the stabilzer was still with the aircraft during that time? Or, is hydraulics simply not a system monitored by ACARS?