Clear Prop,
Before completely ruling out the possibility that the aircraft may have glided or attempted a controlled descent/diversion and ultimately compromised ditching, is it worth considering again that the report mentions the swapped RMP1 at Rio?
Nope, gliding implies loss of power to the ACARS equipment. So may be consistent with the plane reaching some point within a fairly well definable range of locations for some time afterwards. I'm simply sitting here trying to define what is within the realm of possibility and physics and what is not. I am tossing in some extra margin for the fact that what we think is possible may not be beyond a really desperate and creative pilot.
One thing that I am willing to give up myself is the flat spin scenario unless flat spin includes considerable motion in a constant direction after the spin is entered. The 02:10:34 point is one I have some faith in. I know rather more about GPS than I wish I did. (Nothing bad - just at this age it'd be fun to have those brain cells back.
) So I have faith in the GPS aided nav data. You can bet the plane was within a couple miles of that position at that time and walk away richer if you can find a sucker to bet to the contrary. I also know general RF communications, including SatCom. If the plane had power and had a more or less horizontal orientation there was no technical reason to claim ACARS data could not be transmitted. So either no new ACARS messages were generated (seems unlikely to me), there was a loss of power, or there was a loss of integrity for the plane before 02:15:30 give or take some. This all happened after the last ACARS message was sent and the message handshake completed.
These parameters do NOT rule out a glide in an attempt to restart the engines. Such a glide might not extend very far, though. I'm led to believe the engine restart dive is not properly called "gliding." And the accident description is compatible with such a dive and a last minute attempt to pull up and ditch, for an example.
JD-EE