In the wake of the Malaysian Airlines Flight 370 tragedy, aviation experts met in Washington, D.C. on Tuesday to prevent further tragedies by better locating flight paths.

The National Transportation Safety Board arranged the conference, just as three ships continued searching for the lost plane in the Indian Ocean. Flight 370 disappeared seven months ago with 239 passengers on board and still has not been located.

NTSB acting chairman Christopher Hart began the meeting by asking, “When a flight cannot be located, an incredulous public asks: ‘How can they possibly lose a plane?’ ”

Malaysian Airlines Flight 370 was supposed to be a routine flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. Off the Malaysian coast, the radio and transponder signal went silent. According to satellite data, the plane then changed course and flew for eight hours before the fuel tanks emptied.

Plane crashes on remote areas of land are easy to find, due to their emergency transmitters. But data collecting by Boeing shows that when planes go down in the ocean, which happens approximately once a year, they’re much harder to find.

Experts discussed potential solutions to the problem of finding lost aircraft in the ocean. Some of these solutions are currently being implemented, while others are in testing phases.

The Malaysian Airlines aircraft had a tracking system known as ADS-B (automatic dependent surveillance- broadcast.) It tracks airplane movement through radio towers on land. Aviation professionals discussed the option of covering ADS-B through satellite as well, allowing aircraft to be monitored over remote tracts of ocean.

Experts also proposed extending the cockpit voice recording system from one hour to 20 hours, allowing officials to understand how and why the plane went down. Another suggestion was to extend the battery life of the black-box recorder from 30 days to 90 days, which would aid recovery efforts by helping ships detect lost aircraft during longer searches.