Mystery continues....

Relatives of missing passengers who expressed doubts that the aircraft could have been on autopilot at the time it vanished should study the reports of the Asiana Flight 214 crash at San Francisco in July of 2013, in which the autopilot was flying the plane up until just a few seconds from impact with the seawall at the end of the runway, because its pilots were insufficiently trained and didn't fully understand the complexity of the relevant systems, and the differences between Boeing and Airbus control systems. So it's very possible the autopilot was flying the plane when it ran out of fuel.

So my Question Everything is: "Why can't they rig the Autopilot so that whenever it is flying the aircraft, it sends a regular ping to a satellite which can relay that information back to ground stations monitoring air traffic?" At least then, someone would know whether or not the pilots were flying the aircraft.
If they included data on its GPS location, a record could be kept of its flightpath,
and then if it disappeared, there would be more useful information on where to start looking. These aircraft cost hundreds of millions of dollars - $261.5 millions in this case - and that along with the lives aboard it ought to be enough incentive for inclusion of such improvements in its design. This isn't 'rocket science' but simply common sense. Or so one would think....