messages may have been generated quasi simultaneously.
If true, and I believe that there is a very good argument that it is, then things went South in the cockpit very quickly and suddenly. Totally loosing the airplane in such conditions would have no doubt placed the crew in a non recoverable situation.
As an aside, I attended a BMW presentation over the week end, and one of the tech reps briefly touched on the protocol of fault software. As an example, depending upon how the software is bundled will make a difference in how faults are presented. Often, a component fault will not be valid if another component with a higher hierachy suffers a simular failure, there by creating a dazy chain. Result, not all problems can be tracked down by following the fault tree. Now, don't ask me any questions, I just mentioned what I heard, and am not suggesting this is the case with AF447.