Concerns Over Recovering AF447 Recorders | AVIATION WEEK
Mr Arslanian, for those fairly new, is the head of BEA...the French aviation investigation board similar to the US NTSB.
"Data still is limited, Arslanian says. The aircraft departed with no known faults. In the last received communication from the flight deck, the pilot reported turbulence about a half hour before the aircraft is believed to have been lost."
Now..both Brazil and Senegal report no VHF with the aircraft...and it is not mentioned how this message was received by AF but the suspicion is that it was a cockpit generated acars using satcom. The question a lot of folks would then ask is why isn't on the list of acars messages posted thruout this thread...? The answer to that is that those messages posted were Maintenance messages...using the same basic system but routed to a differerent AF user. For instance we have not seen the routine acars messages the aircraft would normally receive and generate such as weights, out times, off times, position reports. and text conversations with dispatchers.... which always occur. I am sure AF and now BEA and probably Airbus have all those messages...they are just not out in the press.