No indication that ACARS was disabled thus no expert required. Malaysia airlines does not subscribe to the ACARS so their pilots would not be familiar with it. Rolls Royce does have a subscription as part of their maintenance/support for the engines. On this flight there were three messages scheduled. One on takeoff, one upon initial cruise climb complete and one on landing. The second message was sent shortly before the aircraft diverted from plan. The third message was never received because (I assume) the aircraft never landed (crashing doesn’t count). The messages are not of immediate operational interest so they are sent at scheduled transmission windows. The SATCOM link stays active (who turns off their cable modem when they’re not watching television or surfing the Internet).
I believe today the Malaysians stated that in fact the ACARs was turned off and, according the timing of it, that the person making the “All right, good night” radio call to KUL ATC was not the person doing it. As disabling the ACARs would be done in another part of the airplane that then indicates that someone was in the cockpit talking to ATC at roughly the same time someone else was manually turning it off elsewhere in the plane.
Ugh.....
That is what was thinking also ... The only ping missing would be at landing gear down for touchdown. Doubt anyone could say for certain was disabled.
You mean HCM -- for extended overwater operations everyone has to have continuous availability to dispatch, with two-way communications. I think they had ACARS, though it may have been disabled at some point.