ARFOR:
takata Re: Your glide (complete airframe) theory:-
That depends on where the Brazilians found occupants (position, Lat long), verses the occupants found by the French (position, Lat long).
Absolutely not.
The body recovery (and most of the wreckage also) was maped and time stamped (French & Brazilian), I used the official documents released by the BEA showing the day by day recovery. The pattern is obvious: the drift between 6 and 10 June was to the North. Very few bodies (1 or 2) were out of this pattern but not very far away (considering 5+ days at sea), and it may be easily explained by the turbulence of this area.
Do you agree that the two groups were miles apart (minus drift) and could not reasonably have arrived on the surface in the same location?; and then (in the days following) drifted apart (in such dissimilar directions) in two distinctly separate groups?
No. Documents are not showing such a "fact".
Few maps from Brazilian presentations suggested this separation but, in fact, they matched totaly the BEA maps I reported. The explanation was that the Brazilian maps had no dates of recovery, then bodies recovered the 6th were not at the same places as bodies recovered the 9th, but were on the same pattern following the drift.
Following on, which group position (minus drift) are you basing your [pinger/ aft fuse wreckage] assumptions on?
See above, there is only a single group. I took each day the northern most recovered and made an estimation of the total drift that I reported for the previous five days (0.4 m/s average). It doesn't give an accurate estimate of the crash area but it is showing that the wreckage distance is much further South (and possibly South-West) from the actual area searched based on the close to 0214 impact hypothesis (40 NM circle around 0210 position).
Beside, the tailfin was in the middle of the body pattern, following the same drift, and was recovered June 7th. I discarded other wreckages due to size, density and winds effects.
S~
Olivier