The article seems to imply that perhaps the Avalung did play a role, since although it was not in the survivor's mouth, the mouthpiece was in his airspace?
As for the hour-long botched beacon search, the M2 differed from its predecessor M1 mainly in speeding up the pulse rate. But it's still within the spec. Plus the more dissimilar the transmission patterns, the easier the signal separation (whether done by a beacon, or by your brain). In this instance, the survivor and the victim had beacons with very dissimilar transmission patterns.
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