mm43;
Not to belittle your comments, but there is a need to substitute ATLANTICO for DAKAR.
Not at all, thank you for the correction. I have to re-read the two reports from time to time and wrote from memory. Sigh.
BOAC;
do we know if contact between the two oceanics about no 'comms' took place and whether Selcal and 123.45/121/5 was used?
The BEA Reports discuss this in various parts.
Concerning comms between the two oceanic centres about the lack of comms from AF447, yes, the BEA report discusses the comms between DAKAR and SAL (Cape Verde) on P.35 of the 1rst Interim Report. After comms between SAL and DAKAR at 03:54 the report states that DAKAR would try to contact the flight.
In commenting on the lack of communications and the raising of alarms, given the vagaries of HF communications it is not that unusual for flights to sometimes be out of communication, missing one or even two position reports. Sometimes another aircraft relays position reports to the oceanic unit. The BEA Report describes on page 68 the difficulties with HF experienced by other aircraft, (AF459)
The report does not discuss any such relayed position reports or the attempts at same. Lufthansa 507 was, as is SOP, listening on 121.5 and reported hearing nothing from AF447.
SaturnV;
Perhaps I overlooked it, but I have yet to find any reference as to when AF OOC looked at the ACARS messages. These seem not to have raised any flags at AF OOC at the time.
I am not a communications expert but again from experience, having seen incident/event messages and sent these kinds of messages for decades regarding aircraft snags and incidents etc, ACARS maintenance messages are usually broadcast throughout an airline's communications network, (using SITA addresses, I believe). The stream of messages at a major carrier is constant - I don't know what kind of message filtration is in place to highlight more urgent messages and don't want to assume anything; the ACARS doesn't send "GO/MEET/NO-GO" messages, it just sends the text associated with the fault. I believe this series of ACARS messages would likely have shown up as teletype messages on AF's Maintenance Central, (sorry, I don't know what "OOC" stands for but I'm assuming you're referring to AF Maintenance in Paris). Flight Watch is an established, legal airline responsibility for Flight Dispatch and Maintenance alike and I expect that the messages would have been handled as such and that the true import of such messages, in the moment of reception, may not have been fully apparent.
There is some "psychology" here behind a discussion of the processes. Airline work is the very definition of "routine". People see and think what they are expecting, out of daily experience, so the "out-of-the-ordinary" takes time to sink in.
The antithesis of this point is, one is not constantly on alert for every abnormality or event which is teletyped across the system to printers and screens.
While there is an incident-alerting system in place, this wasn't an "incident" at the time of the receipt of the messages. Realization of how serious something may be from reading a series of ACARS messages is not necessarily an immediate process. Some flags may go up in maintenance if one understood exactly what had occurred, but again, it wasn't flight operations who were reading these at 03:15 in the morning. As well, there would be minimal staff on duty in these areas.
These points are neither "excuses" nor "reasons". I'm attempting here to avoid some hindsight bias by putting some flesh on the early events and queries to see how these events may have been perceived by those involved. These queries are natural and obvious now, but may not have been so at the time of receipt of the ACARS messages. That said, there are some questions to ask about HF communications especially as it concerns DAKAR, ADS/CPDLC processes in place at the time (and the failure of at least two aircraft to be able to log on), and airline flight watch processes.