Originally Posted by MaDalton

a friend of mine is engineer for Honeywell and developing new shit for planes - i asked him why they do not simply additionally stream the flight recorder information via satellite - should not be too difficult when they can send already engine data and other maintenance information.

he said too much information to transmit and also it takes usually something like 10 years before new technology is approved and introduced

and: at least until now it almost never happened that a plane got totally lost and no black box could be found - that technology would cost more than not finding a plane every 20 years