If MH370 has indeed crashed in the Indian ocean, its black box can continue to ping data for another 30 days, even while submerged, but it will require submersibles to go a full mile under water just to get within the black box's range. If the search goes on longer than that, it may take at least as long, if not longer, to get an official explanation for MH370 as it did to get one for Air France Flight 447. Until then, questions will continue to pile up about the plane, the airline, and who is going to pay for the loss.

MH370's Boeing 777-200ER is one of the safest planes in the sky. A nearly 20-year-old design, the 777 was the first plane designed entirely by computer, and built with a highly redundant computer system that provides an automatic override against pilot error. Until last year, when Asiana Flight 214 crashed during landing in San Francisco, the plane had a clean operational record. (And Flight 214 was because of pilot error, not equipment malfunction.) According to airline industry statistics, the safety rating for the Boeing 777 is 99.3 — nearly perfect. The actual plane being flown on MH370 was only 12 years old, and was considered to be in good condition, which makes equipment failure, either major or minor, an unlikely explanation for what happened. Whatever the cause of MH370's troubles, it would seem that it was not the aircraft itself.

Likewise, Malaysia Airlines also has a solid, though not perfect, safety rating. It is currently IOSA certified, which means it has passed the IATA (International Air Traffic Association) operational safety audit. It is not on the European Union's blacklist, which is maintained to ban airlines with a poor maintenance history or poor regulatory oversight from flying into European airspace. It is endorsed by the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration, and Malaysia meets seven of eight safety parameters set by the International Civil Aviation Organization. Malaysia Air also has not been fatality-free in the past 10 years.

It is not publically known how much the flight was insured for, though there are reports that an insurance payment of $110 million has already been made to Malaysia Airlines, which is consistent with typical practice; after a plane is missing for two days, it is presumed lost. According to Asia Insurance Review, domestic Malaysian insurer Etiqa Insurance & Takaful wrote 100 percent of the hull coverage for MH370, but nearly 95% of that was ultimately ceded to a group of reinsurers, which each took portions of the risk. The lead insurer for the flight is Germany-based Allianz, which underwrote both hull and liability. London-based Willis brokered the coverage. Other reinsurers include GIC Re, Hannover Re (which has announced it expects $42.6 million in claims), Lonpac Insurance, Malaysian Re and Eurasia.

The exact amount of coverage is not yet known, but as a basis for comparison, the only other Boeing 777 crash in recent history was last July's Asiana Flight 214, which was a total hull loss and resulted in two deaths and 182 injuries. That flight had nearly $2.3 billion in total coverage, with $130 million for hull ($100 million of which was written by AIG, and brokered by Willis), $3 million for crew liability and the remainder going toward passenger liability, and carried by a consortium of insurers. The $110 million payout for MH370 is most likely to cover the loss of the plane itself; liability payments may already have been paid but not disclosed.

Either way, IATA caps airline passenger liability at $175,000 per passenger fatality unless some sign of clear negligence can be proven. In most fatal airline crashes, the families of survivors often look for grounds on which to file suit to get around the liability cap, ironically set by the airline industry itself to prevent itself from being sued into oblivion in the event of a crash. The cap was set many years ago when the industry was in its infancy, and while the cap has been raised periodically over the years, it has never kept up with legal realities. A dead American passenger, for example, averages somewhere around a $4 million liability loss. But that also involves litigation handled in the U.S. It is unlikely that Malaysian or Chinese courts will be so generous, if such actions are brought against Malaysian Air. There is the outside possibility that Boeing itself could be sued in the U.S., but the remote possibility of MH370 succumbing to equipment failure makes such legal action unlikely. Either way, any such action cannot proceed until the plane's black box is located…if that even happens.

At a minimum, Malaysian Airlines is looking at a nearly $40 million liability event based on the IATA liability caps alone. Life insurers typically require seven years to pass before declaring a missing person dead, which will delay those payments to families of the lost passengers and crew as well, though insurers may elect to pay out their policies far sooner than that.

In the meantime, how likely is it that another such disaster will happen? Not very. According to IATA, global accident rates have reached a new low in 2012, when 2.8 billion people flew safely on 38 million flights worldwide. Fatal accidents worldwide have dropped from 20 in 2006 (866 fatalities) down to 15 (414 fatalities) in 2012. Hull loss rates for Western-built jets have dropped almost continuously since 2003, and as of the end of Q1 2013, they were at 0.30 per million sectors flown.

From a claims perspective, this low loss history has led to a relatively soft aviation coverage market, where a crowded marketplace has made getting adequate coverage a buyer's game. Even a major air catastrophe would prove unlikely to significantly harden rates, which means that even if the cause of MH370 were determined tomorrow, and even if all 239 fatalities resulted in a $4 million liability per person (a nearly $1 billion event).

We may never know why MH370 disappeared. For now, the most plausible explanation centers on some kind of pilot action, whether the pilots were incapacitated or intentionally took their plane into nowhere. Until the true story is revealed, however, perhaps the most stinging part of this loss is knowing that experts will not be fully equipped with the information they need to help such a tragedy from happening again.