All About the Black Box
Trans Australia Airlines flight 538 and the first Black Box, 1960
The information recorders in a modern cockpit consist of 2 types of recorders. The Cockpit Voice Recorder (CVR) and the Flight Data Recorder (FDR). The first prototype of the the coupled FDR/CVR was developed in Australia during the 1950s. Although at first slow to recognize the importance of Australian scientist Dave Warren’s invention, after the 1960 crash of Trans Australia Airlines flight 538, the Australian government became the first country in the world to make cockpit-voice recording compulsory.
Twenty-nine people died as a result of the crash, Australia’s deadliest civilian aviation accident. Initially, the device, commonly referred to as the “black box” just consisted of the voice recordings gathered from microphones and earpieces.
Today, U.S. federal regulations require the recorders to monitor a minimum of 88 parameters. Control and actuator positions, time of day and engine information are recorded and stored in a continuous loop. Most modern recorders keep the most recent 17 to 25 hours of information in memory.
UPS flight 1354, 2013
The recorders are typically located in the tail section of the plane because research has shown that the tail is the most likely place for the boxes to survive a crash. Sometimes though, the tail does sustain considerable damage that makes recovery of the box difficult. After the August 14, 2013 crash of UPS cargo flight 1354 in Birmingham, Alabama, NTSB investigators were delayed in the recovery of the black box while the tail section of the plane smoldered following the fiery crash.
Air France flight 447, 2009
But a remarkable test of the durability of the black box occurred after the crash of Air France Flight 447 in 2009. The Airbus A330 with 228 people onboard plunged into the Atlantic Ocean on its way from Brazil to France. Although the battery and the pinging device on the Honeywell FDR was only designed to last 28 days underwater, the plane’s FDR was finally recovered almost two years after the crash. The FDR was located on the sea bed at a depth of 12,800 feet. Remarkably, 100% of the information was able to be recovered.
Because of the integrity of the recovered information in spite of the short battery life of the ELT, Honeywell said they would look at extending the battery life of the device.
The Black Box Recorder market is a relatively small market with several manufacturers. Honeywell, Avionics, L-3 Communications, and Teledyne are the primary suppliers of Flight Data Recorders to the aviation industry.
Asiana flight 214, 2013
After the Asiana Flight 214 crash at SFO, NTSB chief Deborah Hersman said that the cockpit voice recorder recovered from Asiana Airlines Flight 214 revealed the pilots attempted to abort the landing just 1.5 seconds before the jet crashed. The black box flight data recorders also showed there was an attempt to boost airspeed just before the aircraft impacted the sea wall and then slammed into the runway. There was no evidence in the two recovered black boxes that the Boeing 777 was experiencing any problems before the crash. “We think there was no engine defect,” airline president Young-doo Yoon said the day following the crash at a press conference in Seoul, South Korea.
Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, 2014 – missing
As of March 9, 2014, Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 is still missing. The Vietnam Emergency Rescue Center announced it has found signal of the missing plane at 9.50am (local time, which is approximately 12 hours ahead of EST) 120 miles South West of Ca Mau cape, the Southern-most point of Vietnam. The signal is believed to be the ELT (Emergency Locator Transmitter). The aircraft is a Boeing 777-200 which may be using a Honeywell Rescu®406 model of ELT. Benefitting the search and rescue mission is the likelihood that if the plane did go down in the water, that particular part of the South China Sea between Malaysia and Vietnam tends to be more shallow than the northwestern section of the sea. The Sundra Shelf area near the Gulf of Thailand and the Malay Peninsula runs from 130 feet deep near its periphery to a maximum of only 330 feet at its center. This is in contrast to the maximum depth of the China Sea Basin, 16,457 feet (over 3 miles).
Black Box References
Cockpit Voice Recorder Accounts Book, by Malcolm Macpherson
http://www.amazon.com/The-Black-Box-In-flight-Accidents/dp/0688158927
Flight Data Recorder Handbook - NTSB https://www.ntsb.gov/doclib/manuals/FDR_Handbook.pdf
Manufacturers
L-3
http://www.l-3ar.com/index.html
Honeywell
