They simply found Amelia Earhardt.

Sure tells me a lot I never knew about civil aviation. I was under the mistaken impression that commercial airlines were monitored for location 24/7 anywhere on the globe. It comes as a huge shock to find that is not so, they can in fact just fly of into a black hole. Seems so many simple solutions to that you have to wonder why?

If a sailor can buy a Yellowbrick tracker that's good all over the world for a few hundred bucks, why is there not a similiar device on board every one of these planes located where it can't be turned off? Very strange thinking on that indeed.

I agree, Bud. A simple position-only satellite device would seem to be very inexpensive to install, but if you add other data, such as altitude, it gets a little bit more complicated. Of course, I am sure there is a rigorous and extremely expensive certification process for any new equipment placed on board, so the idea of 'inexpensive' goes away.

I made the mistake of listening to a talk radio show for 15 minutes on my way home from work and it was all about listeners calling in with rather bizarre theories as to what happened and why.

The system that broke down is the "human". Unfortunately, there is no effective way to counter this. There is an implicit trust in the pilot's that is needed to function.

There was a tracking device in the form of a transponder and this was deactivated to conceal their path. Aircraft are just like boats, for safety, everything must be connected to a breaker.

The "Where" of this flight is extremely intriguing. The early reports of cellphones ringing would mean that they had registered with a cell tower. There are two things required to make this happen:
1) they were over or near land
2) they were flying low (which was the case of Flight 93 on 9/11)

If these phones connected to a tower, there should be a record. I am surprised there has been no follow up here. Of course, we just may not know yet.

Most importantly, I feel for the families that are clinging to the hope that the plane landed rather than crashed and their loved ones are hostages.

Here's a surprising fact which indicates how hard it is to find an aircraft which disappears into the water. In 1964 a Northwest DC-9 disappeared into Lake Michigan. a few days later bodies and Debri came to the surface and some bodies were recovered. However, people are still searching the bottom of Lake Michigan, looking for wreckage of that plane. This is in spite of the fact that the approximate location was know and the lake is not thousands of feet deep.

It is my understanding there are more than one tracking device on this airplane, but they were deliberately turned off by someone on the airplane. Also some countries do not want to divulge their tracking capabilities.