Now I know that crews don't like the idea of FOQA data to the cloud or CVR/CVideoR to the cloud. But had that been the case here there would be relatives of 200+ people who would at least have known what had happened
I beg to disagree, but the upload system would surely have stopped at the same time as ADS-B / Transponder / ACARS etc.?
It depends on the nature of the failure of course, and/or how things were disabled. But I seriously airlines / passengers will want to pay the costs involved in such a system... and if it is installed for safety reasons, do you as SLF want all the delays / diversions associated with "our FDR system won't login to the satellite, so we cannot depart / must divert"
NoD