It seems that most Boeing aircraft since 1995 or 1996 were retrofitted with the B.U.A.P. The FAA and NTSB are supposedly aware of this fact.
I don’t have a very good source right now. There was a commercial airline Pilot, (former) U.S. Marine Field McConnell, who obtained this information in discovery documents during the course of a federal lawsuit versus ALPA.
I did find these sources: http://www.abeldanger.net/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=UVV8vwwarv8&list=UURGIwParDeoovmhflq9Agmg
http://voiceofrussia.com/us/2014_03_18/Stealth-Technology-Seizure-Behind-MH370-Disappearance-5715/
Yeah, the third source is McConnell via Voice of Russia. I hate it when that happens. I think the information is worth further verification though.
Ask your friend if he has any experience with the acquisition and maintenance habits of foreign 3rd world airlines.
There are very good reasons US airlines tend to never buy secondhand planes from companies like Malaysia Airlines. Their planes are bare bones to begin with and definitely not maintained to FAA nor manufacturer’s specs.
We already know MAS opted out of the Boeing Jet-Data Services. There is no way MAS brought their plane in for annual maintenance and asked Boeing to retrofit it with BUAP.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-03-12/malaysian-air-said-to-opt-out-of-boeing-plan-to-share-jets-data.html
But let’s just imagine for a second that this plane did have BUAP retrofitted. We must say retrofitted because BUAP didn’t exist in 2002 when 9M-MRO was manufactured. But lets say Boeing secretly installed it during it’s last avionics servicing. Why then was the transponder switched off by someone in the cockpit? Or are you saying that BUAP can switch the ACARS transponder off too? Personally I don’t know if BUAP is capable of that.
Any current avionics experts on this forum?