I was ribbing the Cosmo team unfairly, they at least got an image.
The bigger question is why, with the existing technology we have today, nobody seems to put 2 and 2 together. That Cosmo satellite happened per chance to snap the right area 30 hours after the event and, there may be useful evidence there. Did all the satellite operators, civil and military think about taking an image, even if it was sometime after the event, probably not.
A high level U2/TR1 flight over the area the next day may have speeded up identifying where the wreckage could be found, but as far as I know, that didn’t happen either.
We just seem to be using the same search techniques from 40 years ago, which also happens to be the same timeframe for FDR/CVR/ELT development.
Perhaps it’s just unfashionable to find the answers and improve safety.