Well, since a lot of people here doesn't seem to understand what's going on regarding the ACARS/SATCOM stories in the press, let's recap what's going on regarding the new information from the US.
- MAS ACARS comms only work thru VHF since they chose not to pay for the extra fee for ACARS SATCOM link
- That 777-200 is SATCOM equipped
- What was found by US Government services (NSA, or maybe they asked Iridium directly to check the logs) is that, since the a/c ACARS system was out of VHF coverage, the system tried to connect thru SATCOM. But since MAS doesn't have a contract for that, connection was rejected, but remains a trace in their logs.
- That means that what they actually found is the log indicating every time the aircraft ACARS system tried to log in thru SATCOM and failed due to the lack of contract for that. Since the ACARS system onboard that specific aircraft tried for 4 hours after its disappearance to connect via SATCOM to the ACARS network, it means the aircraft was, at least, powered on and, since not found anywhere yet, probably flying.
Sorry if I wasn't clear enough, I tried to write everything down ASAP...
I have an IT background, and according to all the available sources, this is my interpretation of what's going on.
Last edited by opsmarco; 13th Mar 2014 at 23:44.
Reason: Clarification