I Don't Understand

Maybe I'm just stupid, or otherwise ignorant, but let me run some stuff past you.

By now you've heard about the crash of that plane in the Alps. A tragic loss of life, no question. What bothers me first is the emphasis on the two infants and the 16 children. Certainly, that's part of the tragedy and, certainly, we do not like to even hear about children dying. But it happens and it's over. We cannot undo it, we cannot bring them back to life. If you are a believer then you should take comfort that they are, undoubtedly, in Heaven. Personally, I don't think anyone suffered much in that crash... maybe some trepidation about why the plane was descending so rapidly but they could not have seen the mountain they were about to crash into.

But something else bothers me about that crash. Much is being made about the fact that the pilots did not send a signal that they had a problem. This is explained away as pilots are trained to "aviate, navigate, communicate"... in that order so I keep hearing that it is no surprise that there was no distress signal sent. Well, it appears that the pilots failed to do the other two items also. The flight path remained adhered to (no apparent attempt to change course), and they definitely didn't aviate. But something else struck me... why doesn't the transponder send out a signal reporting a problem? It sends out location and altitude on a regular basis (identifier and altitude at the very least) but, if as is speculated, the computer detected some problem and put the plane in a downward path (at a rate of approximately 3000 feet per minute), why couldn't the transponder be rigged to report that problem to air traffic control or to someone, somewhere? At least we'd have some idea of what happened.

Call me silly but I do not understand why this isn't so.