FAA Mandates Major Aircraft "Black Box" Upgrade

coondoggie writes "Earlier this week the FAA mandated upgrades and updates to aircraft voice and data recorders within the US. The goal of the updates: to assist future investigations with 'more and better data' from accidents and incidents. The 'mandate means manufacturers such as Honeywell and L-3 Communications as well as operators of airplanes and helicopters with 10 or more seats, must employ voice recorders, also known as black boxes, that capture the last two hours of cockpit audio instead of the current 15 to 30 minutes. The new rules also require an independent backup power source for the voice recorders to allow continued recording for nine to 11 minutes if all aircraft power sources are lost or interrupted. Voice recorders also must use solid state technology instead of magnetic tape, which is vulnerable to damage and loss of reliability.'"

Comments

Re:It sounds so easy but

[engagebot]

I happen to work at the L3 Communications facility that builds the flight recorders in Sarasota, Fl. Trust me, there's a lot more to a flight recorder than just an ipod in a big orange case. As is, a black box weights 25lbs or more easily. Do you know what kind of force it has to be able to withstand and come out unscathed? Second of all, its not just a storage medium. It contains tons of instruments that actually measure certain parameters about the flight too.

Finally

[ceroklis]

This was one of the recommendations issued by the Transportation Safety Board of Canada following the crash of Swissair Flight 111. I'm glad they finally implemented that. To recap: the flight recorders in that flight lost power 6 minutes before impact, which necessitated a very costly reconstruction of a portion of the aircraft.

In any case I never understood why these recorders weren't required to have a battery backup from the beginning. Seems pretty idiotic since accidents involving loss of power are not hard to imagine. Furthermore devices like card access systems and elevators have had battery backups for years.

Summary forgot an important detail

[the pickle]

From TFA:

"These provisions affect new aircraft manufactured after March 7, 2010."

This won't affect a single new aircraft for two years unless Boeing, Airbus, Bombardier, and Embraer decide to do it on their own, and it does NOT apply to the existing fleet of transport category aircraft at all (i.e., retrofits are not required).

p

Re:It sounds so easy but

[TubeSteak]

But the flight recorder has to withstand the aircraft getting struck by lightning repeatedly, and still continue to function. Discovery Channel had a show that included a segment about how planes survive lightning strikes.

Long story short: Lightning travels along either the aluminum skin or special strips stuck to any non-metallic surfaces and continues on its way without damaging anything.

These are the type of strips the Discovery show was talking about. AFAIK, in a properly maintained plane, lightning almost never goes anywhere near the electronics.

Re:Question: why just record?

[ruinevil]

Quote One thing I remember from an ACM meeting was that radio transmissions take a lot of power compared to getting data and storing to memory. This was from team who used to check the soil moisture and temperature around campus using stakes filled with a battery for some purpose or other. So the blackbox would need a lot more power to survive those 9 to 11 minutes, while transmitting voices to where ever. You can't get all the radio waves from every American plane to Florida anyways. You'd need some powerful transmitters.