But it wouldn’t cost much at all to send some basic telemetry over a satellite broadband link. If there’s on board wi-fi the data link exists already, so no extra cost there. Obviously you wouldn’t stream all the FDR and CVR data. But if you just reported GPS position, speed and altitude every 10 seconds, the bandwidth needed would be negligible, and it would make it much easier to locate the recorder after a crash. Air France spent millions on underwater searches to find the recorder from Flight 447. The reason is that crashes are extremely expensive, and understanding the cause of a crash could prevent another one.
