- 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.
Would the VHF system broadcast to try to establish a connection before trying SATCOM, or is the VHF system somehow aware of being out of range without having to broadcast?