vapilot2004 said, "There are a few statements in the BEA report that are questionable to say the least. No matter. I would like to better understand your posit that the aircraft's engines were not turning and burning?"
As far as can be determined nothing that was not supposed to have flame active in, on, or near it had flame in, on or near it.
A recent message raised doubts about which busses have to go down to kill ACARS. I'd had the understanding that if the engines were turning, properly, that ACARS had power. The plane was sufficiently "together" for ACARS to work through the last ACARS transaction and acknowledgement cycle. That puts the plane in one piece, approximately horizontal, and with power at that time. Loss of power, a relatively large attitude abberation, loss of source of ACARS messages, or simply there were no more ACARS messages to send are the only things that come to mind that would stop them. That latter option sounds like a lower probability than the other three for any long term interruption of ACARS messages while the plane was still under power, horizontal, and in one piece.
My contention is that takata's work coupled with "where could the plane have gotten to before signals ceased" will tell is something important about what the plane did subsequent to the end of the ACARS messages. We can test the flat spin scenario, the dive to try to restart scenario, and all the other scenarios against it. That trims out a lot of bad ones, does it not? The current data very strongly suggests the plane did not stop in mid air and start falling at any of the times of the ACARS messages, for example. The currents would have carried the bodies and debris to completely different positions in those scenarios.
Once we have a class of scenarios that fit these two data sets we add a third and start eliminating what does not fit. We keep adding data sets as they appear and eliminating the scenarios that don't fit. In the end, if we have new data fed in, we may arrive at a solution without the suspected political biases. For fact checking the final report, whether or not it reaches any conclusions, the only original data we cannot get for ourselves is the on site visual impressions from the condition of the debris.
Peel away what is impossible. Whatever is left becomes probable.
JD-EE