Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 makes it clear: we need to rethink black boxes
I'm seeing a lot of armchair criticism aimed at the air travel industry about how these aircraft should be able to be tracked more effectively given "modern technology" and they reference things like broadband in cars, WiFi on flights, etc.<p>What they seem to ignore is that many of these things only work effectively on land in populated areas. Drive your car out to the South China Sea and let me know how well the in-car broadband works and if you are able to send and receive an SMS using your phone.<p>There was an article on reddit questioning why we can track a rover on Mars but not a commercial airliner on Earth. Our ability to track something is a lot easier when things are going right. When something catastrophic happens, whether to a 777 out over the ocean or a rover on Mars, suddenly tracking the objects becomes a lot more difficult.<p>That said, perhaps there are technological innovations that could allow us to more easily pinpoint and track black boxes from downed airliners. I'm just not sure what they are. Any ideas?