Crash Spurs Interest in Real-Time Flight Data
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
Just screw one of these onto the plane:
http://www.findmespot.com/en/index.php?cid=102
$170 + $99/year for the data plan.
They would have a much better idea of where the real black box landed for a trivial cost.
Plus they are talking about voice data, not just the coordinates.
For about 0.5% of that cost they could have a solution that will help people find the real blackbox.
The airlines' cost argument against investing in the technology is actually based on exactly the argument you're making: black boxes are usually very easy to locate.
The $3-$5 per minute data cost also makes sense if you think of the black boxes as transmitting full real-time telemetry and voice recordings. However, that cost is incurred only after manual activation by the pilot or after a mechanical emergency is detected. Most of the time, the boxes will only be transmitting a "heartbeat" signal, which costs much less to transmit.
This should be a new device that operates in parallel with the FDR on the same data.