The messages also showed that the autopilot was off, though it was impossible to say whether it had disengaged itself, as it is designed to do when it receives suspect data, or whether the pilot had decided to turn it off, Arslanian said.
Can we now stop the uninformed chat about manually disengaged autopilots not appearing on ACARS or are the investigators also badly informed?
It would be far more useful if people would investigate rather than opinionate