10 Ways Aviation Changed Since The MH-370 Disappearance

It was exactly five years ago today, March 8, 2014, that Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 disappeared en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.

It remains, along with the disappearance of Amelia Earhart, aviation's greatest mystery.

Despite the vastness of 75 percent of the Earth being covered by water, how is it possible that in this day and age of technology a jumbo airliner could simply vanish?

Tragically, it did.

And to this day it remains unfound, along with 239 souls on board, after two years searching.

In its wake, here are 10 changes that have come to aviation since the disappearance of MH-370.

The first step was for officials across the globe to acknowledge the problem. Traditional radar was no longer viable, not when 70 percent of the earth was not radar-friendly, particularly over open ocean. Something more technologically savvy was needed.

The most important thing to happen in the aftermath was convening a conference, called by the United Nations-affiliated International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) not long after the plane disappeared. In 2016, that led to the Global Aeronautical Distress and Safety System (GADSS), which set future standards for air travel.

Within two years, ICAO announced that planes in distress will have to report their position to air traffic control every minute. However, that's only required for aircraft built from 2022 on.

One of the issues with MH-370 was the belief that it disappeared over the Indian Ocean - but where? The search area was humongous. Now airlines are must report their location every 15 minutes when flying over the ocean.

That's short for "Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast." By 2020, the FAA has mandated that all aircraft broadcast their location every second. It's similar to what the flight-tracking service FlightAware uses. A network of satellites detects the signals broadcast by the ADS-B systems and uses it to track locations.

Starting last year, ICAO mandated that underwater locator beacons last 90 days, instead of 30 that previously had been the standard.

ICAO approved a requirement that new aircraft designs approved after Jan. 1, 2021, include the ability to retrieve the flight recorder before the recorder sinks to the ocean floor. The natural assumption would be a recorder that ejects from the aircraft, like military planes, but Boeing has decided against that.

ICAO also required that planes manufactured after Jan. 1, 2021 include 25-hour voice recorders. Though there aren't any 25-hour flights, the new standards will allow cockpit recordings that start during preparations and end when the crew exits the cockpit.

The 449-page final report on the disappearance of MH-370 did not directly blame the pilots but suggested intent on whoever had control of the aircraft at the time of disappearance. The aircraft's transponders were not only turned off, but the plane was manually piloted off the planned route. Between MH-370 and the 2015 crash of the Germanwings plane into the French Alps - in which it was alleged that a suicidal co-pilot barricaded himself in the cockpit and steered the plane into the side of a mountain - airlines are taking a deeper dive into pilots' background.

After MH-370 and the realization of the technology gap, the public demanded answers. And they were rewarded. But a smaller portion of the public is still suffering - the family and friends of the victims of MH-370. There has still been no definitive answer regarding the flight, and although some pieces of debris have washed up in the Indian Ocean there is still no closure.