With a plane going missing, especially in this day and age, many people are confounded by authorities struggling to locate its whereabouts. They can find your missing smart phone with an app, why not a massive aircraft?

Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370’s disappearance has authorities searching the vast South China Sea. With GPS technology on board, why can’t they find the plane immediately, let alone days later? Firstly many areas of the world, especially oceans, are not covered by radar. Secondly, space-based radars are not available for commercial aircraft. The plane’s navigation systems may use GPS to figure out its location, but it does not relay this information back to ground stations.

The emergency transmitters equipped on aircraft don’t emit frequencies that travel well underwater. The black boxes however do emit frequencies that travel well underwater, but its range is limiting. Thus, considering the size of the South China Sea, if the plane crashed in the ocean, it would take a long time for it to be found. 

[ Source : Forbes ]