They had "ligne de vol".
- yes, but it appears to be an unfortunate expression with more than one meaning, and I feel they should have been more 'accurate'
Nothing unfortunate, it's in fact a rather accurate description of the aircraft attitude.
To illustrate its meaning, just imagine a tail dragger -a DC-3, for instance ; first it sits on its tail wheel and as it accelerates, the tail goes up from a forward pitch control input. There ! the aircraft is then "en ligne de vol".
That description is still used in flying clubs as to teaching take offs.
It doesn't help when even the French cannot agree!
There are two categories of Frenchmen :There are the French aviators and there are the French non aviators. And among them there are old French aviators and not old French aviators. Fortunately there are old French aviators who have French aviators' sons and daughters....
oleole
From that I would dare to conclude that the altitude was constant too.
It would have been a lot easier to read the report and see where they were cleared to FL 350 and also read their communications transcripts.
starliner
I am surprised by the news that the aircraft was set up to provide regular 10 minute AOC position reports via ACARS and yet no procedure appears to have been in place at AFR ops to react to the loss of these regular messages.
Good point. Problem is that these reports overlay on the incrusted routes on a screen.
First there are airplanes sharing the same route at about the same time.
Second, the dispatchers have to provide a lot of OPS requests on some 120 (a guess) long haulers at any given time.
Third, it is not really a monitoring system but a quick way of identifying who is talking, where he is and what his/her needs could be.
The fact that AF447 and AF59 were on the same route at the same time was, IMO, enough to hide AF447's position, unless the dispatcher specifically separates both traces from each other.
Another factor could also be that between 0330Z and 0415Z, there could have been a shift change at dispatch, with the normal hand-over tasks to the new dispatcher(s).
That the system could be improved for an irregularity alerting program is, again IMO, an absolute necessity.