My reading of the AAIB safety recommendations is that it is only the fixed ELT that is required to be switched off and NOT the portable devices or those attached to life rafts.
Could that be because they are different units or because they are not located in close proximity to a composite structure and are difficult to access in flight?
I take some poster's points about a crew in flight having a time advantage over the ground firefighting crews when tackling the fire. But reading about the firefighting efforts in the report, I doubt it would be easy for crew members to do this in flight given that the firefighters had to hack away at ceiling panels to tackle the fire with water after failing to control it with halon extinguishers.
This could have been extremely nasty!
