My understanding on satellite technology is that anything you do is incredibly expensive. You don't do anything unless there is a reason for it.
Pinging a satellite which then logs and downlinks this data (again x1000's planes 100's times a day). A satellite which will not respond under any circumstances has no point. A simple off switch in the software onboard would be the most logical way to perform this rather than a credential check via satellite using up bandwidth from the plane to the ground base to the satellite back to a ground base and then onto IT HQ and back again.
Now maybe this pinging leads to results but that isn't by design.