ELTs, whether fixed or portable (and most “fixed” ELT can, if accessible, be un-clipped and used as a portable) which conform to TSO C-126, can and most do have an inbuilt GPS chip.
It will be a very interesting situation if the fire was cause by a fixed ELT.
Extensive Australian research has shown that fixed ELT are an expensive waste of money, as the failure rate in service (failure to broadcast a signal after an accident, or broadcasting a signal when they shouldn’t) is worse than 90%, and 100% in water.
If this fire is caused by the the ELT, the answer is to get rid of them, and rely on the portables contained in or adjacent to the slide-rafts, the type shown in the illustration.
The “mandatory” fitting of fixed ELTs resulted from political pressure in the US, after a well known politician was killed in Alaska. No cost/benefit analysis was ever carried out.
ICAO picked up the FAA rule, again without detailed consideration.
The Australian research could find no case where a fixed ELT in an airline aircraft had worked after an accident, including accidents where the tail of the aircraft was substantially intact.
Folks,
The above is a reader comment from the Australian blog, "Plane Talking", run by Ben Sandilands, a well known and highly respected transport journalist.
Australian aviation regulations are generally consistent with these finding.
After the Australian rules (dropping mandatory fixed ELT) were put in place in about 1997, a five year post implementation review was carried out by CASA Australia, and the ongoing failure rates of fixed ELT was confirmed, as was the very low failure rates of portables in survivable accidents.
All in all, fixed ELT have proved to be a very expensive waste of money --- and all brought about by a knee-jerk political reaction to a single GA accident in Alaska.
PS: As to what FAA require in US airspace, I would suggest some who have made definitive statements might re-consider.
For any foreign carrier on a FAR 129 Certificate/Operations Specification, it is all in the detail, and unless there has been a major change in recent times, quite a number of foreign carriers, who normally only carry a number of portables, usually attached to the slide-rafts, have not had to fit useless fixed ELT to operate in US airspace.