Incidents like this remind me just how vast the planet is. Zooming out on Google Maps, you might think that compared to our body size, the size of our houses, cities, counties, etc. isn't that large after all; sure you look like ants in comparison but the surface area seems traversable. And even if it's not, we have radars that can scan vast swaths of the surrounding areas, no?

Wrong. The Earth is unmeasurably huge compared to any human-made technology (and that includes radars, cities, etc.), and that's just the surface of the planet. Add the third dimension (and much more difficult to scan, no less) of the oceans and air, and you'd wonder how the heck we can still find our way on flights. It's a fragile tech, and when it crashes (literally), it's almost impossible for us to find where it happened.