bludvl_x19 said:

What is so special about this capton wiring then? Sounds like a bit of a pickle for Airbus

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Kapton ages and develops cracks, which then can lead to short circuits. The temperatures of s spark are high enough to ignite the Kapton. The resulting crbon cocktail enhances the incineration process and the catastrophy is enavitable. Unfortunately it is very difficult to check the state in a visual test. And checking everything in 50 to 130 miles of cabling is quite a task.

Up to the date of Airbus manufacturing starting, they were the only manufacturer who surveyed mantenance engineers for ease of repair, servicing and safety.

They're all pretty safe; having said that, some friends of ours were flying to Taba in Egypt a few months ago when the aircraft (B757) developed a serious de-pressurisation fault which caused the Captain to dive from (approx) 30,000 feet to 5,000 to re- pressurise the cabin. At first the oxygen masks in the cabin wouldn't drop and the cabin crew had to release them manually. The thing still got down safely. I wasn't that long ago that would have caused a disaster.

bludvl_x19 said:

What is so special about this capton wiring then? Sounds like a bit of a pickle for Airbus

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http://www.vision.net.au/~apaterson/aviation/wire_types.htm

Oldschool said:

He told me the plane was grounded in India three weeks prior to the crash. The reason for grounding was to prevent what actually has finally happened.

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so if it was grounded, what specific fault was it grounded for?

Oldschool said:

The signals received from the plane from the moments clearly indicated that a electrical short circuit was the b eginning of the catastrophy, which progressed to frying systematically the electronics.

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The messages sent by ACARS do not "clearly indicate a short circuit" at all. They indicate a various things including:
Autopilot disconnect
Alternate law
Autothrottle off
TCAS fault
Rudder Travel Limiter fault
ADR disagree
Standby instrument (ISIS) fault

Most of those are linked into the pitot/static system (airspeed detection).

I've not seen any suggestion that there is any indication that kapton wiring is a cause.

See http://www.pprune.org/rumours-news/376433-af447.html for lots of people who really know what they're talking about on this...