Quite extraordinary to wake up to find this plane has not been found even though there has been several hours of daylight in the area.
Disclaimer : rare visitor to this forum but like many others got caught up in the evolving MH370 mystery.
There are many on here (I guess) who are sailors and it is hard for us to understand how a plane can dissappear given the low cost of position reporting equipment these days. I can fully understand the huge costs of retrofitting any equipment to an aircraft with type approval certification etc but how about this for a cheap simple idea to be incorporated into new builds.
Just a simple tube containing a pressure activated transponder with epirb mounted internally near the tail. Maybe 30cm long and 10cm dia. On take off this would be set to auto. On a normal descent it would be deactivated at say 1000m but in a distress situation the pressure sensitive sensor would release a mechanical spring at say 250m which ejects the epirb. The whole thing could cost less than USD10k and have no hazardous potential for the aircraft (apart from the batteries in the epirb).
Apologies to all you guys on here for posting such a Heath Robinson idea but joe public just cannot understand how another plane can go missing in 2014.