Communications
Gentlemen,
if one wishes to have a serious look at communications in this instance, then it would be nice to know who on the ground first realized something was very wrong. Why did a stream of messages pointing at some serious failures onboard, followed by lack of automated position reporting, fail to wake someone up in either Maintenance or Operations/Dispatch ?
Remember, a series of more than 20 technical faults between 02:10 and 02:14, and then no automated position report at 02:20... No auto pos report at 02:30... No auto pos report at 02:40... Who is lacking in communications discipline here ? What is the use having someone supposed to watch over the whole operations, ETOPS & Dispatch, etc...
Clearly, when did someone, either in ATC or in AF ops, wake up and pick the phone up ?
Trying to find fault into the perfectly normal behaviour of a crew on SELCAL watch, or trying to say that somehow they should have written their death will on 121.5 while having their hands full with messed up flight controls and UAS... No pilot would do that, really, except on a TV show. We are talking imminent death here, and few are those who faced that who can talk about it. A little respect is due here.
In addition, who was there to listen on 121.5 and who was questioned by whom on that particular subject ? I wouldnt like to be the one who was on watch on 121.5 at that time, both because of what they could have heard, and because I would not enjoy being told to shut up on this matter.
Either there is no deliberate intention to hide the truth, and a lack of comms on 121.5 by the doomed pilots is very understandable, or there is a deliberately misleading smokescreen in place, and there is no way you could tell with certainty that no communication occured at the time of accident.
This communications subject is not one with which one could try to bash dead pilots, but it does raise some nasty questions for all those still alive on the ground who were supposed to watch a little over them.