Originally Posted by
formulaben
Precisely how would souls have been saved if either UA93 or MH370 would have continued to squawk during its doomed flight?
UA93 was in an area (sort box) that was only secondary radar so disappeared. Continual tracking would have enabled some kind of fighter response - whether that would have saved anyone nobody can know.
MH370 appears to have deliberately stopped squawk. Had it continued there would not have been a wasted effort searching the South China Sea for the aircraft and it would have been apparent that it had flown across the straits of Malacca and around the northern tip of Indonesia. Again, there is no way that anyone can know whether that would have led to people being saved, but it certainly would have reduced fruitless searches and some 'dark' satellites may well have tracked it to its final demise allowing recovery efforts to commence in the right place before the barely useful FDR/CVR locator batteries died. Again saving huge amounts of time and effort.
Finally, knowing that whatever is done in the cockpit the aircraft will be continually tracked _may_ act as a deterrent for certain planned hijacks in the future.