Its clear whatever happened, happened very quickly!!
People staring at ACARS transmission and speculating at what happened, might also want to look at "How" ACARS work? Even if its a simultaneous failure of systems, transmision is made after a confirmed failure based on the priority.
So even if all systems failed at the same time, it "appears" there is a time lag between first failure and the last message transmitted.
That IS a point. Can a systems guru confirm exactly how ACARS transmits this stuff in real time? Do the timestamps on the ACARS messages reflect the real times of separate transmissions of individual events - or one single 'squirt' of data listing the last few events and the time they happened?
I've seen quite a few posts
assuming that the listed messages meant ACARS sent several transmissions over a 3-4 minute period but I'd appreciate confirmation from a geeky type who understands the innards of these boxes that this really is a good assumption!