What many of you dont seem to realise is that ACARS outages are pretty common, even in the middle of Europe. ACARS comes in and out sometimes and pilots would think nothing of it, a station might be congested or doing some maintenance or whatever. Likewise transponders fail on occasion, not very often but again if a transponder failed during my flight I would think nothing of it, that is why we carry two of them.
On the contrary, many of us do realize that. The question must be put, however, is what are the
odds of both of them failing on the same flight within minutes of each other? How often has that happened in your knowledge and experience?