Not knowing where the aircraft went down in the Indian Ocean, is, excuse the pun, unfathomable.
Perhaps that's unreasonable, given the oceans cover 72 per cent of the planet's surface.
Yet on hearing the latest twist in this sad saga I couldn't help but think of lauded aviator Amelia Earhart, who went missing over the Pacific and was never seen again during an attempt to circumnavigate the globe in an Electra.
She stood only a slender chance of being found. Aviation technology wasn't too flash in 1937. In fact it was the same year the Hindenburg airship exploded mid-air, killing 35.
Fast-forward 77 years and witness what authorities are calling "the largest search in history". Unlike Earhart's disappearance, this is no sole-passenger disappearance in a small six-tonne twin-engine aircraft.
The Boeing was carrying 12 Malaysian crew members and 227 passengers from 14 nations. To boot, it was the first "fly-by-wire" computer-controlled aircraft, and the first entirely computer-designed.
Still we can't find it.
This is the stuff of the vexing Lost television series, or the embellished Bermuda Triangle folklore.
In an age of cellular locating technology and GPS satellite gadgetry where we track the travels of ocean going mammals for thousands of nautical miles and micro-chip our dogs, I refuse to believe we've lost a 63-metre, 136-tonne piece of tin.
Surely these commercial machines are equipped with something with a little more muscle than a triple-A battery-powered black box signal.
At this juncture it's unknown whether this is a Malaysia Airlines dereliction of duty - or an industry-wide shortcoming that needs serious redressing.
It's a little unsettling to know aboard a commercial aircraft thousands of feet above sea level, that we've been flying blind.
