briefly Newcomer

As far as I know, and in this particular case, there is a black hole where the pilot communicates that he/she is leaving a particular area and will re-establish contact a.s.a.p. (in this case with Cape Verde Islands about 50 minutes later). During this interval there is no possibility for the pilot to contact anyone but the automated messages continue to function via satellite. However, the alert is apparently raised only after the pilot fails to re-establish communication. At that point, presumably they look back at the automated messages and say 'Oops, it seems there was a major problem'. That's my understanding, right now.