[SauronOfMordor]

General aviation planes can buy a box for a few hundred bucks which will transmit position info every minute via the satellite phone network.
One would think airliners would have one.

[BlackVeil]

Very good point. I do not believe that a plane can just disappear, and that they are without any effective tracking device.

[Vermont Lt]

Perhaps that is what lost contact.

[radu]

General aviation planes can buy a box for a few hundred bucks which will transmit position info every minute via the satellite phone network.
One would think airliners would have one.

It does seem like a good idea to have one of those as backup. I guess they feel all the bells and whistles on the big jets are enough to do the job.

Bigger isn't always better. Sometimes smaller and simpler is.