Wasn't the "Shut up Gringo" comment made somewhere in Spain by a Mexican airline whilst descending over (and in to) mountainous terrrain? If the BA aircraft had no ACARs they'd have no way of contacting London directly from Moscow, and even if they had, the company would get very annoyed by people wasting time and money sending requests for sports results. I for one would not like to spend my time flying in eastern europe distracting ATCOs who don't speak the best english by constantly grilling them about sports results they may not even know. Id rather they concentrated on keeping me away from other aircraft. By the time the aircraft reached somewhere in Europe where they speak decent English and might know the results I'd imagine the crew had forgotten about the request. Even if they hadn't, do you really think ATCOs over Europe want to have their time wasted by being asked sports results every five minutes? I know the guys who work the BA company frequency at LHR get seriously annoyed when people waste their time calling up for trivial things, they're busy enough as it is.