Read an interesting comment in Flight International yesterday in one of the letters, suggesting that a [panic] button be introduced along the lines of the airbus ditching button alluded to in the Hudson river incident, but with the effect of tranmitting an automated mayday message.
The idea being to reduce pilot workload if they find themselves in a true mayday situation. The idea being to automatically provide basic details, position, airspeed, flight number etc. from data entered into the flight computer prior to take off & in-flight updates to aid in any search should the worst happen.
Forgive me for my ignorance of the ACARS system [I don't get into the "front offices" very often], but wouldn't it be easier to make the automated reports sent on ACARS include position, speed, altitude & heading, or to have separate ACARS reports of this data, say every five minutes mandated when out of range of ATC radar / radio?