After the seek for survivors and recovery of victims in tragic aviation accidents — like that of a UPS cargo plane shortly after takeoff from Louisville Muhammad Ali International Airport in Kentucky last month — comes the seek for flight data and a cockpit voice recorder often called the “black box.”
Every business plane has them. Aerospace giants GE Aerospace and Honeywell are amongst a couple of corporations that design them to be nearly indestructible so that they may also help investigators understand the reason for a crash.
“They’re very crucial since it’s one among the few sources of knowledge that tells us what happened leading as much as the accident,” said Chris Babcock, branch chief of the vehicle recorder division on the National Transportation Safety Board. “We will get loads of information from parts and from the airplane.”
Industrial aircraft have turn out to be very complex. A Boeing 787 Dreamliner records hundreds of various pieces of knowledge. Within the case of the Air India crash in June, data revealed each engine fuel switches were put right into a cutoff position inside one second of one another. A voice recording from contained in the cockpit captured the pilots discussing the cutoffs.
“All of those parameters today can have a really huge impact on the investigation,” said former NTSB member John Goglia. “It’s our goal to to supply information back to our investigators who’re on scene as quick as we are able to to assist move the investigation forward.”
This significant data also can help prevent future accidents. A crash can cost airlines or plane manufacturers a whole bunch of thousands and thousands of dollars and leave victims’ families with a lifetime of grief.
But in some circumstances black boxes were destroyed or never found. Experts say further developments reminiscent of cockpit video recorders and real-time data streaming are needed.
“The technology is there. Crash worthy cockpit video recorders are already being installed in loads of helicopters and other varieties of airplanes, but they don’t seem to be required,” said Jeff Guzzetti, aviation analyst and former accident investigator for the Federal Aviation Administration and NTSB. “There’s privacy and price issues involving cockpit video recorders however the NTSB has been recommending that the FAA require them for years now.”
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— CNBC’s Leslie Josephs contributed to this report.
