Flight Data Recorder

If you look at the design cycle and certification cycle for aircraft instruments you will see that it takes years to get new technology accepted by the FAA.

GPS has been around for years. Airplanes can fly themselves from taxi-back to ramp with nobody in the cockpit. But they don't.

Your tax dollars at work.

When you forget about cost almost anything is possible. Why we can and have put men on the moon using a cost plus budget.

The problem though of your implied question is that you seem to think that the black box incorporates everything that an accident investigator needs to know to discern the cause and circumstance of an aviation accident. It doesn't. The black box is certainly a critical factor but it may not alone reveal the root cause of an accident. I do remember that this was the scenario of an airline accident but not which one so forgive me for not citing which accident and altering the data details to make my point.

A commercial airline flight takes on enough fuel to make the usual 2000 mile flight plus a safety margin of 500 miles of fuel. On this particular day the weather is horrendous along the way so even though this plane does not fly directly through lousy weather, the less turbulent route they take adds an 200 additional land miles of travel. Unknown at this time though is that the added head winds of the weather system and the distance traveled have meant that 2400+ miles of fuel has been consumed by the time they reach their destination's traffic control who have many planes in the air eager to finally touchdown after the lousy weather that just passed. The thing that lulls everyone into complacency on the aircraft and ground control is that this aircraft includes a low fuel warning light that turns ON when a nominal 100 miles of fuel is left onboard. The wiring to this lamp happens to have a break in it but the "lamp test" pushbutton tells the pilot that the lamp still works. The plane runs out of fuel. The rest is a tragic tale in history.

The black box in this tale accurately recorded its data on the fuel tank levels. After the crash everyone wondered why the airplane pilots never requested a fuel emergency condition that would have granted them immediate access to a runway. It took months of forensic analysis of the remains of the aircraft to find out that one single wire broke just when a whole myriad of coincidences collaborated to make everyone think that things were not critical when they actually were.

So now that I've taken your precious time by telling you this long tale I'll quickly get to my point. Retrieving recorded data is the trivial part of an accident investigation. It does get the largest part of the news headline because finding the box usually implies that everything that can be learned from an accident is now in the grasp of the investigators. It neither means that we will soon know what happened or if the critical information resided in the black box itself will ultimately tell the tale.

Due to travel across the ocean the most appropriate way to transmit the data is through a satellite. This will have a non-trivial expense. If there is a strong push to do it then the data transmission expense will not stop the project. If there is not a strong push then the expense will be impossible to justify.

Consider also:
the number of aircraft in the air at any one time and
the bandwidth necessary to transmit the volume of data continuously from every aircraft, then
add in the complicating factors of all weathers, all conditions, all locations,
aircraft transiting multiple timezones .... then
where would you locate the storage device(s)..... it goes on....

I think that the current de-centralized approach, where each aircraft carries its own recorder, while not ideal in terms of survivability and recoverability of the black boxes in all cases, has proven itself to be the best, and probably the only viable solution at this time.

The idea is to have data of the last flight minutes even if NO kind of communication with any station is possible. S.M.

Lyn is absolutely correct. Black boxes are older than dirt and they work, so the avionics industry has no interest in modernizing them. Most avionics in commercial aircraft are 20 years old (or more), and airlines have no interest in updating those either--because they work.

More modern avionics are being supplied to business jets, and the results have been so terrible that the software programmers and engineers at avionics suppliers refuse to fly on those airplanes. The FAA qualification and certification procedures are a joke. (I get all this from people I know who work at a major avionics supplier here in Cedar Rapids).

Sending data continuously to a dedicated drive specific to one plane seems to Me to be a real good idea or another way, communications and data storage are so advanced now. That way the data would be available immediately and without searching for the "Data Recorder". Too hijackers might be more easily thwarted.

An Excellent Idea.

Why didn't they think of this earlier ?

CatBurglerV8

With any airplane crash, there are many unanswered questions as to what brought the plane down. Investigators turn to the airplane's flight data recorder (FDR) and cockpit voice recorder (CVR), also known as "black boxes," for answers.

The FDR contained 48 parameters of flight data, and the CVR recorded a little more than 30 minutes of conversation and other audible cockpit noises.

The Wright Brothers pioneered the use of a device to record propeller rotations, according to documents provided by L-3 Communications. However, the widespread use of aviation recorders didn't begin until the post-World War II era. Since then, the recording medium of black boxes has evolved in order to record much more information about an aircraft's operation.

Although many of the black boxes still in use today use magnetic tape, which was first introduced in the 1960s, airlines are moving to solid-state memory boards, which came along in the 1990s. Magnetic tape works like any tape recorder. The Mylar tape is pulled across an electromagnetic head, which leaves a bit of data on the tape.

Now, Black-box manufacturers are no longer making magnetic tape recorders as airlines begin a full transition to solid-state technology, as they are considered more reliable and can store up to two hours of audio and 25 hours of flight data.

So it would seem that the FAA/CAA/NTSB are stuck in the past and they all adopt the attitude," it ain't broke so it don't need fixing"...and as the makers of the "black boxes" are constantly developing and improving the little beauties, then they will be with us for another century. You also have to consider if the black box disappears then so does a whole mountain of tried and tested technology which has given thousands of people gainful employment for many years

A possible way forward might be both "black box" and data transmission via satellite work side by side.

Forgive me if I'm wrong on this, but isn't most data is recorded on a metal wire inside the "Black Box" rather than magnetic tape?

It is my understanding that the metal data tape (wire?) must withstand high temperatures in case of an onboard aircraft fire or being subjected to being submerged in water for a period of time.

IMO, USB data bugs and the like would not survive if subjected to these extremes + high G-forces in the event of a mid-air mishap, explosion and/or crash.

Maybe it is "Magnetic Metal Tape.. I don't know (we could be splitting a few hairs here).. but as the BB's are developed and redesigned, Solid State devices are now the thing to use and have been since the '90's

The first were tape, then magnetic disc, then SS... as for wire, I don't know...

In a crash/explosion/fire/water the contents of the BB MUST be able to survive all those extremes and the outer casing is designed to protect the inner workings AND survive.

So whatever is inside... past, present or future is it over designed and made to survive the unthinkable

If you want further information you might like to try L-3 Communications, a US manufacturer of Black Boxes, or google it.

However. we must agree that whatever is inside and whatever the construction of the outer box, it is there to last the lifetime and more of the aircraft its fitted to.

Your comment:-

A possible way forward might be both "black box" and data transmission via satellite work side by side.

is the way its done by some airlines today (according to another poster in another blog about the 2009 AirFrance Atlantic accident, of which the black box was only fairly recently found....)

In fact, I do believe that some info was captured in this way of that ill-fated flight......if I remember correctly.

To my personal mind, that would appear to be a reasonable way to progress....

Airbus, already have in place, communication systems that send messages of mechanical health of their aircraft back to the operator's maintenance control. Air France's crash into the Atlantic is an example, that Airbus 320 sent numerous messages to their maintenance control, indicating conflicts with the air speed, auto-pilot disengagement and everything else mechanical that was failing in flight. And that information is stored on a hard drive. Their maintenance control had a pretty good idea what cause the problem within minutes after loosing that flight. And finding the "Black Boxes" just confirmed what they already knew. In this case, the Pitot Tubes.

All aircraft manufactures are going to this type of reporting systems, but like what Lyn said, " it's going to be a long time coming before DFDR and CVR are going to be removed from the aircraft". Call it Redundancy. DJ

I am glad to see that Airbus has this real-time system in place, but it lacked some vital information, such as the pilot's continuing to try to pull up while in a stall condition.This was not revealed till they recovered the black box.

Airbus has the right idea,transmit real-time flight data,and use the black box as a backup.They just need to transmit more info. than currently used.

I did not advocate eliminating the black box, it could still be kept as a redundant backup.

It never hurts to have a backup, most aircraft designs are triple redundant anyway.

Just a FYI, the DFDR's are not accessed for aircraft maintenance purposes.

Wake me when wireless is perfect and never interrupted.

If you wait till Anything is perfect,you will have a very long nap.

I am sure all of you enjoy reading http://www.iasa.com.au/folders/Publications/pdf_library/levine.pdf for some excellent information on a worldwide, real-time aircraft remote monitoring and recording system.

It's an interesting sells pitch, but they keep making reference to, "ATC, needing altitude data". Here in the US, it's mandatory to have "encoded transponders" that report the aircraft's altitude, if you plan on flying in a controlled airspace or with prior permission from ATC. Unless it's midnight, any other time, ATC is a simulated controlled chaos. Now they want to add RAFT into the chaos. Again, here in the US, we have Air traffic Controllers that are sleeping on the job, so no matter how much information is sent to ATC, it could fall upon closed eyes. And, they haven't tried talking a Captain into excepting more eyes into their cockpit. Which, the cockpit in itself, is a problem and has been since the introduction of the co-pilot's seat. As they are still dealing with cockpit management issues to this day. The bottom line is, who's going to have the final say, when it comes down to the safety of that aircraft's flight?

Then, to put this type of system in place, that broadcasts over open air waves, is just asking, to be HACKED. Lockheed-Martin thought they had secure access, only to find out they had been broken into!

One of the latest articles to come across my desk that may be of interest.

The End of the Black Box: There's a Better Way to Capture Plane Crash Data

THANKS! Looks like I was not the only one thinking that the BLACK BOX was archaic in the digital age.Instead of sometimes weeks speculating on what happened, analysts can start immediately on the data.

I read that article a while ago, and it started me thinking on all the reasons real time data could fail. Like atmospherics, or damage, band width, satellite availability, even cyber attack, or any number of on-board system failures.

One should not forget 'stressed' aircraft scenarios are quite different to 'normal monitoring'.

At the end of the day, it's a useful ancillary to a hard wired, integrally back-up powered, device/s.

_{(Why does typing this seem like Déjà vu?)}

No substitute for hard-wired data recorder, except perhaps broken wires,which is analogous to "atmospherics, or damage, band width, satellite availability, even cyber attack, or any number of on-board system failures".

Point being that nothing is perfect, and it pays to have a backup plan and redundancy when available.

Even then, there are some situations where the only way to determine the status of a device at moment of impact is an actual physical examination of the object in question.

An example is when the hydraulic controls suddenly reversed inside of the spool piece: direction:left became right, and up became down.

As a result of this, the hydraulic valves were redesigned.

It took many months of investigation to discover that it was a fluke that occurred only at a certain pressure and temperature.

The Black Box indicated no problem in hydraulics, but it was a problem nonetheless.

My intent was not to state that the black box is totally useless at this point in time, but to suggest a redundant back up for it.

Eventually, it will become obsolete, as will pilots, as UAV's become more refined.

UAV's are already taking off and landing autonomously.

The pilot will go the way of the elevator operator and the blacksmith.

It will probably take another generation for people to accept a plane with no pilot, but remember when an elevator needed an operator?

"It's Deja vu all over again"...Yogi Berra

It's deja moo...I've heard this bull before. HiTekRedNek

"It will probably take another generation for people to accept a plane with no pilot, but remember when an elevator needed an operator?"

Yeah - I remember when trains had drivers

Obviously, the first liar never has a chance.......

_{(consider this to #24)}

^{_{better put this OT, or I might upset the OP}}