<p>Pprune has all sorts of people on there - a bit like here where some know their rugby very well - others not so much.. There, some are pilots, some pretend to be. Not a terribly reliable source, it does stand for "rumour network" after all.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>As for transponders and GPS - not really linked. The transponder is for SSR (secondary surveillance radar) although a lot of aircraft these days are equipped with ADS-B (automatic dependent surveillance - broadcast) which replaces SSR and doesn't require those sphere things that you see on hills. ADS is already mandatory in Aus and some other places, it will become the norm in future. It is getting more advanced and will certainly help in cases like MH370 and MS04 although they still don't broadcast continuously.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>A kiwi company is actually producing small, cost effective, trackers that can go in helicopters and smaller aircraft which won't have ADS (yet anyway).</p>
<p><a data-ipb='nomediaparse' href='http://www.spidertracks.com/'>http://www.spidertracks.com/</a></p>
<p> </p>
<p>The link posted above has this from the ACARS (aircraft communication addressing and reporting system)</p>
<p><span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:Times, 'Time New Roman', sans-serif;font-size:16px;text-align:center;background-color:rgb(255,255,192);">00:26Z 3044 ANTI ICE R WINDOW<br>
00:26Z 561200 R SLIDING WINDOW SENSOR<br>
00:26Z 2600 SMOKE LAVATORY SMOKE<br>
00:27Z 2600 AVIONICS SMOKE<br>
00:28Z 561100 R FIXED WINDOW SENSOR<br>
00:29Z 2200 AUTO FLT FCU 2 FAULT<br>
00:29Z 2700 F/CTL SEC 3 FAULT<br>
no further ACARS messages were received</span></p>
<p> </p>
<p>These are faults that have been sent from the aircraft to the company - usually straight to engineering who monitor aircraft "health". It is easy to jump to conclusions, but those messages indicate that something happened on the co pilots side in the flight deck, there was then smoke detected in the toilet, then in the avionics bay (under the flight deck) which lead to some pretty important things failing. FCU is what the pilot uses to control the aircraft (there are 2 channels and only one has failed at this point) and F/CTL is the flight control computer. That is only a secondary one and there are 5 of them in total (that run the fly by wire system) but it could be an indication that a fire was burning them all. Not nice. They also think that pilot turned off the airway which is a first reaction if in trouble to avoid hitting other aircraft.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>What caused the failures, fire? All speculation but could be several things. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Looks like they have found wreckage now:</p>
<p><a data-ipb='nomediaparse' href='http://www.bbc.com/news/live/world-africa-36328976'>http://www.bbc.com/news/live/world-africa-36328976</a></p>