Super Happy Unfun Thread!

[That Guy]

again, if you want to pass info outside of line of sight, you need either a heavy HF radio or a satcom system, both add weight (= more fuel consumed = higher operating cost) and expense. then you need to buy time and storage from someone who owns a satellite cluster. and then you have maintenance costs of installing / repairing / checking / upgrading / integrating another system which needs at least 3-4 boxes and an antenna.

so the short answer, is yeah it's possible, but it's not cheap, and out of the millions and millions of flights, it'd only prove useful on maybe 1 per year. most flight don't abort their flight paths and shut down all communication. if this guy stayed on his flight path, the search would have ended in the first week. if he had comms up, he could had radio'd on the guard frequencies and everyone within range would have heard him automatically.

if they can recover the CVR they might get the last 30 minutes of cockpit audio, but salt water and impact effects have a way of destroying things.