After missing jet saga, changes not assured

The disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 has exposed wide gaps in how the world's airlines, and their regulators operate. But experts warn this is not likely to be one of those defining moments that lead to fundamental changes.
For financial and technological reasons, and because of issues tied to national sovereignty, the status quo is expected to prevail in the way passports are checked, aircraft are tracked at sea and searches are coordinated.
In an age of constant connectedness, it's almost inconceivable to lose a 63.7-metre-long airplane for more than a week, or be in the dark about what happened onboard around the time it went missing.

The reality is that large portions of the globe do not have radar coverage. Over oceans, pilots fill in those gaps by radioing air traffic controllers at routine intervals with position updates.
And while planes record sounds in the cockpit as well as speed, altitude, fuel flow and the positions of flaps, that information is not shared with anyone on the ground.
Crash investigators only get access to the data on the recorders after combing through the wreckage.

Numerous experts have said it is time to update tracking abilities and use satellite links to provide real-time feeds on the operation of planes and conversations within the cockpit.

However, transmitting data by satellite from all 80,000 daily flights worldwide would not be cheap.
Airlines made an average of USD 4.13 in profits per passenger last year and USD 2.05 in 2012, according to International Air Transport Association, the industry's trade group.
Any additional costs would eat into those slim profit margins.
Some experts say planes do not crash frequently enough, let alone disappear, to justify the cost.
If such information were to be streamed live, there would be major concerns about privacy says Robert Clifford, a personal injury lawyer in Chicago who has been involved in several aviation lawsuits.

"Once it's broadcast, the data from a plane would essentially be considered public access material, something that aircraft manufacturers, pilot unions, operators and even accident investigators don't want," Clifford says.
There is also a question of who would receive and control that data. There are concerns that an airline, plane maker or government worried about its reputation could meddle with the information.