cws:
Hi, thank you for your reply, I read it but could not really comprehend it completely since I am not familiar with airbus. We have also two mobile elt which have to be manually activated but the third one is build in and is in the position armed at all times in flight, meaning it will start once a certain g-force was applied, happened even on some really hard landings...
All right, so maybe I'm not very well informed about this and maybe PJ2 could answer this question about build-in beacon. All I know is that Air France contacted the Satellite SAR provider and they found no trace of activated beacons. If they had one build-in, it didn't turn on.
I was previously talking about the mobile ones, and it is the same as yours, two are locked in overhead panel with survival equipment in case of ditching.
S~
Olivier