As you probably all have heard of, there is an airliner with over 200 passengers aboard that went missing over 10 days ago, and we still don't know it's location.
I posted about this topic on another internet forum which is dedicated to aviation. Some ideas for improving tracking were discussed, and there were basically two groups of opinions:

One group of people who believes that it's too early to discuss this topic, and that we need to know in details what happened first
Another group who believes that it's never too early to discuss improvements (well, OK sometimes it is) - I am part of this group and shared ideas about how we can improve tracking for this problem not to happen again.

Since this is a somehow geeky topic, touching to satellite communications, automated software and even internet (there was a mention that internet, which starts to be more and more available across airliners, could be used to send data and help tracking and monitoring aircrafts), I thought we could discuss it here too!

To quickly recapitulate, and according to my limited knowledge, what we know is that
- ACARS, which is a automated system that sends back data (including possibly location data) to ground bases, went off at some time around the last voice communication with the co-pilot. ACARS was otherwise configured to send data every 1/2 hour (or was it every hour?)
- The transponder, which is a device that sends basic data (identification, altitude and maybe on or two other things) back to the radar station on request, also went off
- I think ACARS kept sending some sort of "ping" to satellites for hours afterwards, but this did not include any location information which would help find the aircraft

That is a weird combination, and I can understand one would want to know what happened first before wanting to discuss improvements - yet I still thought there was room for improvements in our time... After a couple of iterations on the concept, my last idea was an "emergency satellite transponder". It would follow the same principles as a normal transponder, but:
- It would use satellite communications to receive and send signals, therefore would be reachable outside radar coverage.
- It would be fitted with it's own battery, and would not offer any way for the crew or anyone inside the plane to disable it.
- Optionally, it could be made to automatically broadcast signals when a catastrophic event is detected.

Since it could be made independent (since it has it's own battery), it could be attached to the exterior of the fuselage, maybe as a pod or something, so as not to require extensive changes to the structure, and attached in a "semi-loose" way, so that it would (hopefully) separate and float on impact with water.

It could also be made to hold records of the most recent CVR/FDR data (on an SD medium), as a backup for the main boxes.

Other proposals were made, such as an ejectable floating beacon, for example...

Hoping that this is not much information... what do you think of this problem (if you have an opinion)?