Can I just put the satellite link to bed once and for all.
There will be noway of transmitting data up to a satellite and down to an SGS (Satellite Ground Station) for recovery or use in an inquiry. Yes, the technology exists, but there are just not enough satellites up in the sky to make any sort of inroads into the number of channels that would be required. I suspect nobody will put satellites up on behalf of the air industry, so they would have to fund it themselves. On average it costs about $500m to put a satellite up into orbit and maybes 200 more may be required up there. That cost (expensive even for airline budgets) would have to be passed onto the passengers, which would make flying extremely expensive.
Secondly, placing an omni-directional (which it would have to be) satellite dish on board and aircraft would cause an immense amount of pain for any aircraft manufacturer. Also, you cant hop from satellite to satellite (like mobile phone coverage) you need to know the specific upload/download speeds and upload/download freqs for any data transmission. Any satellite on board an aircraft would have to have auto-tracking and know exactly where and when it should be looking in the sky for a satellite. Most satellites up in the sky move around and do not stay in the same location, so the aircraft would have to constantly be looking for that movement, as well as counter acting its own movement.
Yes, info could be transmitted blind, hoping the satellite would pick it up, but what would be the point in that!