Flight Data Recorders, Decades Out of Date

Tisha_AH writes "For the past fifty years the technology behind aircraft flight data recorders has remained stagnant. Some of the advances of cloud computing, mesh radio networks, real-time position reporting and satellite communications are held back by a combination of aircraft manufacturers, pilots unions and the slow gears of government bureaucracy. Many recent aircraft loss incidents remain unexplained, with black boxes lost on the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, buried under the wreckage of the World Trade Centers or with critical information suppressed by government secrecy or aircraft manufacturers. Many devices still rely upon tape recorders for voice and data that only record a very small sampling of aircraft dynamics, flight and engine systems or crew behaviors. Technologically simple solutions like battery backup, continual telemetry feeds by satellite and hundreds of I/O points, monitoring many systems should be within easy reach. Pilot unions have objected to the collection and sharing of detailed accident data, citing privacy concerns of the flight crew. Accidents may be due to human error, process problems or design flaws. Unless we can fully evaluate all factors involved in transportation accidents, it will be difficult to improve the safety record. Recommendations by the NTSB to the FAA have gone unheeded for many years. With all of the technological advancements that we work with in the IT field, what sort of best practices could be brought forward in transit safety?"

Comments

"Cloud computing"

[bsDaemon]

Trying to take that a bit literally, are we?

fp?

Re:"Cloud computing"

[plumby]

It's not that difficult to continue to store the data locally and only back it up to the cloud when a connection's available.

Dune Coons

[Anonymous Coward]

So the one place where there would be a benefit to all this nifty surveillance technology that keeps popping up everywhere else and for once, with no civil rights issues ... and they let it go decades out of date. Doing something useful must not be as fun as circumventing the Constitution for politicians.

Really if this were a private Internet connection with an expectation of privacy they'd have come up with 20 different ways to monitor it, 5 of which wouldn't require a warrant due to bad precedent. A flight data recorder has no concerns about privacy and such so it just isn't a priority. Nice. Real nice.

tape isn't bad

[infalliable]

Tape is one of the best long term and reliable storage methods. As long as it doesn't burn (which kills any memory type), it's more stable in most situations than the modern memory devices. Remember, it has be stable in salt water, in high impact, humid environments, dry environments, wide temperature ranges, take electrical shock, etc.

People just think it sucks b/c it's old school and clunky.

Re:tape isn't bad

[drinkypoo]

As long as it doesn't burn (which kills any memory type), it's more stable in most situations than the modern memory devices. Remember, it has be stable in salt water, in high impact, humid environments, dry environments, wide temperature ranges, take electrical shock, etc.

Flash is better at all of those things than tape except electrical shock, and you can isolate the module with optical signals and power via induction (with its own fairly complex power supply in there on the other end, thus handling surges) or via optical power, which is horribly inefficient but who cares? It doesn't take much power to write flash, and turbines can be designed to produce basically any amount of electrical power you like.

Re:tape isn't bad

[Whalou]

Information isn't stored on tape anymore in a blackbox. From TFA:

Today most black boxes--the majority made by L-3 Aviation Recorders, in Sarasota, Fla.--can record 256 distinct streams of digital data, or parameters, per second, and store them all for 25 hours before writing over them. The latest voice recorders can store 180 minutes of conversation, while the older ones store 30 minutes. Both kinds of data are stored in stacked semiconductor dynamic RAM memory boards.

Re:tape isn't bad

[flappinbooger]

Flash is better at all of those things than tape except electrical shock, and you can isolate the module with optical signals and power via induction (with its own fairly complex power supply in there on the other end, thus handling surges) or via optical power, which is horribly inefficient but who cares? It doesn't take much power to write flash, and turbines can be designed to produce basically any amount of electrical power you like.

X2 on flash. Shoot, the black boxes could be made to do all of those things you mentioned to isolate it, and then the flash itself could be ruggedized in some fashion and have multiple redundant copies.

They could log every piece of information to recreate every aspect of the flight right down to every word spoken and button pushed, let alone flight path.

I think it comes down to the fact that they (pilots) don't want that level of scrutiny. Why not? Well, would you want it in your car?

Re:tape isn't bad

[DarkKnightRadick]

I think it comes down to the fact that they (pilots) don't want that level of scrutiny. Why not? Well, would you want it in your car?

Except you own the car, the pilots don't own the airplane they are flying and your car isn't carrying hundreds of passengers who are paying your employer for you to fly them to a destination. If I was a pilot I would welcome that level of scrutiny. Where am I going wrong so that I can improve my skills as a pilot.

Re:tape isn't bad

[Tubal-Cain]

And damage to tape isn't all-or-nothing.

Re:tape isn't bad

[hot soldering iron]

Bullshit. My wife worked on the "black boxen" (really orange for visibility in a wreck). She was always complaining because the internal tape mechanisms were the exact same as an old 8-track from the 70's, and with the tape constantly running the ferrite wore off. The boxes were full of black crap, and sometimes the rollers were so old, the rubber went gummy and fscked up all the tape. Lot's of the recorders came in totally inoperative, and had been that way for a long time.

She was so glad when they finally started making, and using, solid state drives.

Re:tape isn't bad

[vijayiyer]

Would you feel comfortable with a keystroke logger installed on your work computer by your employer?

Re:tape isn't bad

[Obfuscant]

If I was a pilot I would welcome that level of scrutiny. Where am I going wrong so that I can improve my skills as a pilot.

Except that is not how the data would be used. Every infraction would be used as a reason to fire someone, and hire a less-expensive employee. And in case of any accident or incident, any unrelated error would be fodder for extended lawsuits. Any minor failure in a judgement call would be costly. If the pilots debate turning on the "fasten seatbelt" annunciator based on a marginal radar return and "maybe" some turbulence ahead and someone is injured, that debate will become "gross negligence".

You need to understand the aviation liability industry. There is a story of a fellow who flew a Piper Cub who removed the seats. He taxied to the runway, and because there were no seats he couldn't see over the dash, so he didn't see the van parked on the runway. He hit the van. He died. The family sued Piper Aircraft.

Re:tape isn't bad

[FoolishOwl]

If my job was such that typos at any time could kill hundreds of people in minutes, then yes.

Out of date?

[seeker_1us]

They work, don't they? Yeah more bells and whistles might be nice, but as Scotty said "the more you overthink the plumbing, the easier it is to stop up the drain."

OP, you may have a point but you've argued awfully

[FuckingNickName]

Cloud computing? Conflation of data not being recorded and the choice to be secret about what's recorded? Technologically simple solutions with "hundreds of I/O points"?

Rather than hand-waving over every single modern technology which might be remotely relevant to the flight recorder, how about writing down, point by point, each improvement you feel should be made and why you feel it would be beneficial. Mention deployments to flying aircraft as well as destruction testing which has been done. IOW, what that is broken are you able to fix?

And, yes, pilot privacy is a concern because certain well-known air crashes have involved the airline and/or even government falsifying data to put the blame on the pilots (cue fingers wagged at France).

Buzzwords

[halfaperson]

Why would a black box need to use cloud computing or mesh networks?

Just because new technologies have emerged doesn't mean they are necessarily applicable in all areas of computing. My knowledge in this field is limited, but I just don't see the point of a twittering black box, or whatever web 2.0 meme is the flavor of the day.

Re:Buzzwords

[rotide]

Cptn flt 1524 JFK->CVG just incorrectly set speed for landing. Humans gunna die! lol!

Re:Buzzwords

[halfaperson]

Sure, it would be a nice feature for the black box to somehow send its data somewhere safe. If "cloud computing" is nothing more than sending data to a remote server, well I guess this post fits the bill as well, making it nothing more than a useless buzzword.

Re:Buzzwords

[natehoy]

Because black boxes are not always recoverable, and if the box can have some sort of continuous connection and can send the data somewhere safe, you don't even have to search for it. You can focus your physical investigation elsewhere. You can also focus on rescue without worrying about the "clock running out" on finding the data recorder.

All important data should be backed up. Data that is about to be subjected to an extremely hostile environment, doubly so. Flight Data Recorders can survive a lot, but they aren't indestructible, and having them sink intact to the bottom of an ocean with the rest of the aircraft renders them as useless as if they were destroyed.

Any way you can take as much of that data as possible and get it backed up somewhere other than an aircraft that's about to crash is a Good Thing. It may be too expensive to be practical, but it at least merits discussion.

A few crazy ideas:

Install a secondary flight data recorder to a caching device, and hook that up to a transmitter. Whenever the aircraft is in RF range to a towered airport, have the transmitter send as much of the flight data as possible in compressed form to a computer at the airport, along with the aircraft's tail number. Now an NTSB or FAA investigation into a crash can include a request to search airport-stored backups (possibly incomplete, but at least existing) of recorded flight data even if the black box itself is damaged, destroyed or cannot be recovered. There might be some indication of trouble even hours before the crash, and a lot of crashes happen in range of airports anyway so you'd have a pretty complete set of data available before you even send the rescue teams out.

Alternatively, or even additionally, put a satellite uplink on the aircraft and reserve a few satellite frequencies. If a pilot squawks mayday, the flight data recorder starts transmitting the contents of its memory (in reverse order, so the most recent events are sent first) to a satellite immediately. That covers data where the aircraft is outside radio range of an airport. Again, you might not get all of the data, but you'll probably get some of it, even if the flight data recorder itself is destroyed or unrecoverable at the bottom of the ocean.

Hell, you could put radio-linked "repeater" with some memory that ejects itself from the aircraft upon a mayday squawk and continues to receive black box data while in range, then deploys a little parachute and float balloon. The onboard Flight Data Recorder continues to record data and retransmit it to the repeater, which will contain most or all of the data, and have a much more graceful landing and be much easier to recover. That cache could even have a satellite repeater so it can send the data in real time to a satellite just in case it becomes unrecoverable.

Hell, put a few extra terabytes in the flight data recorder and have aircraft FDRs replicate data to each other continuously. If Flight 459 goes down, Flight 128 who was in the vicinity might have a backup copy of some or all of 459's FDR data, and that data will be automatically relayed to the nearest airport when Flight 128 comes in range of an airport, where it can be pieced together with other bits captured by other flights.

None of these crazy ideas eliminate the ability to get the flight data recorder itself if it turns out to be recoverable, it just provides alternate mechanisms whereby some or even all of the data might be backed up before it becomes subject to the risk of being lost forever.

FAIL

[m0s3m8n]

"Many recent aircraft loss incidents remain unexplained, ....., buried under the wreckage of the World Trade Centers" - This has to be the dumbest statement of all time. I think everyone knows what happened to the planes THAT WERE FLOWN INTO THE WTC BY MUSLIM TERRORISTS. Fail.

Re:FAIL

[LWATCDR]

You also left out the part about the government hiding crucial data. You know like when Grey's cause a plane to crash or when the Illuminati shoot one down to see how we will react. Where is my tin foil hat?
What people don't understand is that you are
more likely to die in your car or hit by lightning than in an airliner crash. It is a flashy news worthy event when it happens because it is so rare.
Here is the big question. How many times has a black box not been found? And how many times has the lack of one caused other planes to crash?
The airlines are already adding real time telemetry to their new airlines if for no other reason than to improve maintenance. The older black boxes are getting replaced be newer and better ones. The old ones do actually work very well and have provided the data needed to improve safety over the years.
So for this most part this whole thing is a paranoid issue with very little merit in the big scheme of things.

Re:FAIL

[natehoy]

Let's take the "instant backup" concept a bit further, though. I realize this is pure speculation, but...

What if the data was backed up to the nearest towers continuously? The controller, seeing the plane off course and unable to raise the crew, might be able to access the cockpit voice recording seconds after it was recorded (listening in on the cockpit almost in real-time). He'd hear what was going on and know minutes or seconds earlier that he had a hijacking on his hands, and might possibly have been able to scramble an intercept more quickly.

I'm not for a minute suggesting that the WTC attack could have been prevented by this, because the incident happened very quickly, but having that data available long before you even start recovery, and in some cases before the crash even occurs, could be useful.

Re:FAIL

[Sprouticus]

You also left out the part about the government hiding crucial data. You know like when Grey's cause a plane to crash or when the Illuminati shoot one down to see how we will react. Where is my tin foil hat?
What people don't understand is that you are
more likely to die in your car or hit by lightning than in an airliner crash. It is a flashy news worthy event when it happens because it is so rare.
Here is the big question. How many times has a black box not been found? And how many times has the lack of one caused other planes to crash?

Well unless my logic 101 professor in college failed miserably, it is impossible to know if a box which was never found could have prevented another crash.

a bit for unions a bit for bureaucracy...

[DMiax]

The rabid tone of the summary is completely unsupported by the article itself. Does the submitter have any evidence that advancements are held back by unions, bureaucracy and privacy concerns? The article does not claim anything like that.

They are just proposing a replacement technology with a catchy name. The submitter is a massive troll.

Re:a bit for unions a bit for bureaucracy...

[operagost]

Actually, it does say in the article:

It has been a decade since I first proposed the glass box, and progress toward it has been shamefully slow. The main hurdle is sheer institutional inertia. The strongest institutional opposition has come from airline pilots, who fear that the practice would lead to full-scale monitoring of their work, much as it has for interstate truckers. In 2000, in reaction to the EgyptAir crash, the FAA tried to mandate cockpit cameras, but the U.S. pilots' union managed to prevent it. The rest of the world, which followed the U.S. lead, has also done nothing.

Regardless, it's the article's author who is jumping to conclusions here.

uh...what?

[Pojut]

...citing privacy concerns of the flight crew.

Not only are you on the job (which means your privacy is significantly reduced by default), you're job involves being responsible for hundreds of lives. I'm sorry that you're worried about people potentially overhearing you and the co-pilot talking about that hot piece of new flight attendant, but recording flight data is just a bit more important.

Pompous assholes.

Conservative Tech

[necro81]

The simple fact is that you can't take ordinary hardware, put it in a box, and say that it's ready to be a flight data recorder. The simple example is storage: even though you can get a 2-TB harddrive into your computer, it'd never pass muster for flight data. Even once you find ultra-ruggedized hardware that you're happy with, you then need to subject it to a few years of excruciatingly brutal tests to make sure that, in the event of a crash, you have a reasonable chance of getting useful information back.

Because the pipeline is so long, the FAA ought to, years ago, have put a development program in place. They should model it along the lines of a DARPA program: one- or two-year commitments with substantial deliverables. Want to play again next year? Better deliver this year. When the contract's up, the money's done. They ought to pit competing factions against each other: have development teams one year become destructive testers of someone else's hardware the next year.

Re:Conservative Tech

[InEnacWeTrust]

No. (although you answer completely beside the point, we're talking about the safety of buzzword external means of recording)

On modern airplanes, the RAT (ram air turbine) is an electrical generator not hydraulic). It supplies DC emergency electrical network and a few flight control power.

It's not at all academic. The RAT helped save many aircrafts from crash.

(pneumatic is the air intake at engine level that supplies part of air conditionning and pressurization systems)

Constant telemetry...

[geogob]

A direct telemetry feed to ground stations or via satellite could be a very interesting way to monitor the airplanes and give crucial information in the even of a crash, but could not replace an on-board logging device. In the even of catastrophic malfunction, on-board recorders are most likely more reliable than networked data. But in the even the on-board recorder is lost, the telemetry feed could give most of the required information on the systems leading and the events leading to the malfunction.

To some extent, these systems already exist and are used by maintenance crew to schedule maintenance and get early warnings on possible problems with the airplane.

Having a global system that is not company-based, but centralized and international could give not only make incident reconstitution easier, but might also improve transparency on aircraft maintenance on less "serious" airlines and provide real time information (wetter radar feed, wind shear data, turbulence, etc.) to air traffic control and weather forecasters to improve safety overall.

The major technical issue that this would bring is a problem of bandwidth. There are a lot of aircraft in the air and it would generate huge amounts of data. Transmission, storage and analysis would all be challenge.

Re:It's absolutely ridiculous

[tibit]

Umm, no. You're almost a century out of touch with reality. What you say was true in 1930s.

Today, when an airplane crashes, the human has failed. Pretty much always. Technical issues that lead to crashes are very, very rare. If you were to place monetary bets, a winning strategy is to bet for human failure.

Re:It's absolutely ridiculous

[dkleinsc]

"Well, I don't think there is any question about it. It can only be attributable to human error. This sort of thing has cropped up before and it has always been due to human error."
-HAL 9000

But seriously, the actual source of most plane crashes is a combination of a lot of factors: mechanical problems, pilot error, management practices (such as overworking pilots to the point where they're more likely to commit a pilot error), weather, a certain amount of bad luck, poorly maintained airport facilities (particularly in foreign countries), and errors by air traffic controllers. There's tons of redundancy and other checks to make it hard for any one of these to cause a crash (even pilot error: there are alarms and such that make it much easier for the pilot to do the right thing).

Welcome to Drudge-dot!

[damn_registrars]

Interesting intro:

held back by a combination of aircraft manufacturers, pilots unions and the slow gears of government bureaucracy

Does the article support the notion of the pilots unions fighting against modernization of flight recorders? No, it doesn't. Does common sense support such a notion? No, it doesn't either.

Really, this is not a place for union bashing. If you have an axe to grind, so be it. But don't try to wield your axe at every conceived opportunity, or you'll end up making yourself look silly - as you just did.

Re:Welcome to Drudge-dot!

[damn_registrars]

Just look at the news and see all the crazy things unions do that dont make sense (unless you are pro-union).

Can you provide an actual example of such an action? People love to go on with "my cousin's best friend's aunt's hairdresser's husband's kid's teacher heard a story about ..." but yet they can't provide a source for such an event happening.

Whereas people who have had their eyes open in the last couple of decades have noticed that unions have consistently been losing power for roughly the last 20 years. Membership is down across the country (in part because they have so little power) and anti-union activities by employers have been damn near endorsed by the government.

Whoever the conservative hack was that wrote this summary came up with their little anti-union snipe in spite of the fact that the actual article didn't say anything about unions. If they want to go around bashing unions, they are welcomed to do so. However, as I've already said, they don't further the discussion when they resort to making shit up.

IMHO Unions are concerned that with more ubiquitous FDR and especially CVR data, it will be easier in a he-said-she-said environment post accident to defend their members' actions and cover any mistakes that aren't able to be proven otherwise.

If only you could back up your opinion with fact. But just like the hack who wrote the summary, you won't do any such thing.

Think of it this way: would YOU want a permanently mounted GPS in your car tied into your car's brains so the following happens?:

You started out trying to claim the unions to be somehow evil (in spite of not being able to offer any facts to support your notions). Now you are taking a stance in support of what you claim the unions are supporting. I guess it is no small wonder why you couldn't bother to log in to make your claim.

Re:Welcome to Drudge-dot!

[TubeSteak]

Does the article support the notion of the pilots unions fighting against modernization of flight recorders? No, it doesn't. Does common sense support such a notion? No, it doesn't either.

Did you read the same article I did?

The strongest institutional opposition has come from airline pilots, who fear that the practice would lead to full-scale monitoring of their work, much as it has for interstate truckers. In 2000, in reaction to the EgyptAir crash, the FAA tried to mandate cockpit cameras, but the U.S. pilots' union managed to prevent it. The rest of the world, which followed the U.S. lead, has also done nothing.

Do you not consider in-cockpit cameras to be a modernization of flight recorders?

Here's the first article that i dug up when searching for "pilots union" and cockpit recorders
http://online.wsj.com/article/NA_WSJ_PUB:SB124201244946205809.html
Colgan Air Inc., which operated the [crashed] flight where 50 people died], is proposing to download and analyze random cockpit recordings in the future as a means of enhancing safety and enforcing cockpit discipline. The union representing Colgan's roughly 480 pilots is dead set against it.

If you keep searching, you'll only find more of the same.
Pilots Unions endlessly fight tooth and nail against anything that would impinge upon the cockpit.

Telemetry

[kieran]

According to a TV show I watched on the subject some a while back, British Airways have been taking live telemetry from their planes for years.

Re:Aviation age predates the information age

[Chatsubo]

I don't live in the USA. But...

The USA sets the standard. If the FAA won't touch it, pretty much no-one else will, since their product will be useless in one of the top markets in the world, and I'm pretty sure the other major markets just follow the example of the USA anyway.

Also, indeed, it seems the experimental crowd grows smaller. I am 30, and by a huge margin the whippersnapper of the local EAA chapter. I'm not even that active, but I'm trying to get a plane built "someday". That's more than I can say for the rest of "gen-X". The sad part is, even though my composite plane will (hopefully someday) be light-years ahead of what the general-aviation guys are flying, it's still a design from the late 70's. There's not much "new" out there... The most radical guy I can think of is Rutan, and he's getting on in years now...

And that's the EXPERIMENTAL crowd. As far as I can tell, Cessna are only interested in stamping out their ancient designs for the rest of time. And why shouldn't they? the older aviation crowd wanna fly what they know... and the FAA are totally cool with that! I can hardly imagine any significant flying school not having a fleet of 172's. It's the status quo for the aviation guys, and status quo is all there is for them. I find this very irritating since I'm an IT person, and I want to see continuous improvement and experimentation.

Aviation had an age where people were free to try new things, and try they did. But these days propose anything just a little bit out of the box and even your local EAA guy starts telling you how crazy you are for not sticking to the "tried ways". It seems air-folk think that everything's been tried and any deviation from the set standard is to ask for death. If you get totally crazy, yes, I agree, you'll probably die, especially if you're "eyeball engineering", like many a self-styled builder is known to do. That's not what I mean here.

I feel that FAA certification has killed any innovation that is to be had in the industry. That is combined with a general lack of interest from young people in experimental flying (no, getting your com and bussing people around in a Caravan doesn't count). When the current (already oldish) generation of EAA-ers die, I'm not sure there are going to be significant numbers of people to replace them. I think, in about 15 years, I will be one of two EAA people left in my city, down from enough people to run the local EAA airfield by themselves. I cry for the day that particular initiative will die due to lack of interest.

Re:Damn unions...

[Richard Steiner]

Passengers are represented by unions?

Yeah...

[morari]

Sure... "lost" under the wreckage of the World Trade Center. Uh huh.

Re:It's absolutely ridiculous

[Wyatt Earp]

Really? Air France Flight 447 just falling apart in the sky going 537 mph at 35,000 is from a human failure? US Airways Flight 1549? Emirates Flight 407?

No, humans aren't the cause of all crashes, a chunk of them yes, but not close to "pretty much always".

Checking that out and looking up the causes of the accidents you'll see human error by the flight crew is a cause of some, but mechanical failure is a larger cause of accidents.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Aviation_accidents_and_incidents_in_2009

And yes, I do have my pilot's license.

"Advances of cloud computing" are being held back?

[sirwired]

Given that "Cloud Computing" as a buzzword is only about two years old, and has yet to receive a great deal of commercial deployment, I think we can hardly blame the FAA, NTSB, Boeing, Airbus, and airlines for not deploying it Right The Heck Now.

What does that even mean, to use "Cloud Computing" for the "black box"? Cloud Computing has about as coherent of a definition as the previous buzzword du jour, "Web 2.0".

SirWired

Re:Constant telemetry...is a reality

[Thwyx]

There is nothing technically preventing this. It's already being done. GE Aviation engines can be fitted with technology to report, in real time, the behavior of engines on a plane while it is still in the air.

It wouldn't be a stretch to extend the telemetry to other plane systems.

http://www.geae.com/services/information/diagnostics/tier.html

Re:It's absolutely ridiculous

[tibit]

WTF didn't they put an interlock of some sort? FAIL.

Bandwidth!

[gnieboer]

There are good technical reasons why FDR data doesn't make sense to upload raw data automatically.

The pure FDR data is sampled at a high data rate, which varies according to model of FDR. The most modern systems also collect hundreds of data points at a time. This is discussed in the article, though I'd challenge some of their bandwidth calculations... the sample rates they quote seem very low (for modern systems), though I don't have my books in front of me.

What DOES make sense (and again, the article does address this), is having computing capability in the FDR (or outside of it, as it wouldn't need to be crash-worthy) that filters the data and ID's in real-time out-of-normal events and reports them.
In fact, most airlines already use a system like this, but not for the purpose of crash monitoring, but to detect aircraft problems in flight and alert ground crew so they can they can be prepared to fix them before the pilots even know there was a problem.

The issue is that this uplink capability can't replace the on-board FDR recording capability. That black box must still be there, as during the crash sequence, there is a good chance your satcom/etc systems will fail before the final crash. So this can augment, but not replace.

They also discuss adding a capability to comb through the complete raw data (you can just download it on landing as another route). Yep, great idea, but already being done by many airlines.
See http://www.boeing.com/commercial/aviationservices/brochures/Airplane_Health_Management.pdf

And in fact, the military is using the FDR data to check their pilot's proficiency as well as the aircraft performance:
See http://www.navair.navy.mil/PMA209/_Documents/MFOQA_101_20090224.ppt

Re:It's absolutely ridiculous

[tibit]

Please don't twist my words. I don't claim there are no non-human-factor caused crashes, I just claim that a vast majority is human factors, and mostly cockpit human factors at that.

AF447 is, to the best of my knowledge, a case of the pilots getting confused by a single point of failure in the air data instrumentation. If you look around, you will find posts by pilots who faced similar issues, had similar ACARS messages sent out, and they recovered without problems as long as they followed procedures. Surely it did fall apart in the sky, but it didn't "just" fall apart, at least there is no reason to think this way so far. To me, that's not unlike China Air 006 but with a different ending.

USAIR 1549, the famous Hudson water landing -- well duh, it was not a human nor a mechanical problem. Force majeure. One example of it, so what.

Emirates 407 -- well thank you, because that was a classic case of human error. Funny coincidence of you mentioning it -- just see yesterday's TDWTF story about Command 696. ;)

Hello? McFly?

[daemonenwind]

How about the lesson, "Never save data that can only serve to get you sued out of existance if something bad happens".

Until there's tort reform in the USA to bring us in line with countries like Germany, this data will never be captured or saved.

Utter bullshit

[Animats]

"For the past fifty years the technology behind aircraft flight data recorders has remained stagnant.

There's been enormous progress in flight recorders. The first ones only recorded a few basic items, like altitude, airspeed, attitude, and control positions. The recording mechanism used a stainless steel tape, on which diamond points scratched graph lines. (Those were really rugged. That stainless steel tape could survive almost anything and still be read.)

Today's recorders are (inevitably) digital, recording perhaps a hundred parameters. Most key engine and airframe data is logged. They also record both what the pilot's control positions are and what the aircraft control surfaces are doing, which allows distinguishing between pilot error and control failure. There's a separate cockpit voice recorder. Enough data is recorded that the data can be loaded into an aircraft simulator and played back to reproduce the events.

Few flight recorders are not recovered. In the last 10 years, there have been four failures to recover a flight recorder - two from 9/11, Air France Flight 447, and Siberia Airlines 1812. Of those, only Air France 447 is still a mystery in which flight recorder data would be useful. And, in fact, Air France 447 was "phoning home", over a low-bandwidth maintenance link, reporting trouble with the air data sensors.

So there's an argument for sending more data back on the maintenance links, but this does not involve "the cloud".

Re:It's absolutely ridiculous

[tibit]

I agree that everything with safety implications should be subject of scrutiny. It's just that human factors are very widely misunderstood. You have mechanics who can inspect any flying hardware, but good luck finding a "mechanic" who can examine a pilot to determine if he/she is fit for flying that day.

Re:100% buzz-word compliant, for your protection.

[AGMW]

It's technology that needs to be improved and can be improved and government/corporation control not of the data (it's already in government/corporation control) but of technological updates that could save lives.

I'd argue that the tech doesn't need to be improved, just current tech applied!

As I understand it, BA already record vastly more information than is required in the black box and retrieve it from each 'plane when it lands. Obviously in the event of an accident this info is often/usually lost because it is outside the black box, but the collection of that flight data from successful flight is still useful. Now how about some of that nifty burst-transmission stuff the military use. How much info from the on-board repository that BA currently fills in-flight for their own use could be transmitted once a critical problem has occurred, or indeed when a pilot (or co-pilot/navigator/steward) presses the red button when any incident occurs?

I also remember watching a documentary about Rolls Royce jet engines and I'm sure it showed telemetry from their engines in flight and anything 'odd' was flagged up so the operator could instruct service personnel to inspect the engines when the 'plane next lands.

Honestly, none of this is rocket science and nothing "new" needs to be invented - just apply the current levels of technology to the problem for a leap forward in available info!

buzz-word compliance

[Anonymous Coward]

Next week on slashdot, the aircraft that can post to twitter, and update it's own facebook status.

Air France 447 is now friends with Atlantic Ocean
Status: Crashed

Re:It's absolutely ridiculous

[Martin Blank]

You're absolutely correct about redundancy. There's a long chain of things that is supposed to happen before any flight. Here's what has to happen before I fly my little rental Cessna 172:

• Annual inspection must be completed and signed off by an airframe & powerplant mechanic (A&P) with inspection authority (IA)
• 100-hour inspection must be completed and signed off by an A&P
• I review the squawk sheets (basically a list of problems reported and actions taken by the A&P to address them)
• Preflight planning, which includes:
  • Planning the route, ensuring that adequate fuel is available on the plane and/or en route
  • Making plans for alternate landing sites
  • Gathering and understanding the weather forecasts
  • Filing a flight plan if it's more than 50NM between airports
  • Getting current weather status along the route of flight just prior to preflight
• Preflight inspection, which includes:
  • Visual check of oil and fuel levels and check for fuel contamination
  • Visual check of all aircraft surfaces, manual manipulation of ailerons, elevators, and rudder, and feeling the prop edges for excessive wear
  • Check of instruments prior to starting
• Run-up check, which takes place after starting the engine and before taking off, includes:
  • More instrument checks, plus testing the autopilot
  • Elevator trim check
  • Magneto check (basically seeing if the engine runs rough on both magnetos and then one or the other magneto singly)

That isn't even all of it, and the list is more complete for a plane that actually has a black box. There are other things that happen along the way that aren't part of official checklists, including brake checks, validating compass and heading indicator accuracy, using the radio, and just paying attention for anything that doesn't feel right. There are checklists for take-off, climb, leveling, descent, landing, post-landing, and shut-down, not to mention all the emergency checklists. I've got a stall warning horn as well that is a function of the aerodynamics of the plane, and the autopilot lets me know if it's disabled. I fly a G1000 version of the C172 with two big displays, and it's got even more alerts, both visual and audio, to let me know when something is amiss, including when traffic is close (gotta love TCAS). I usually fly with flight following anyway, so ATC can help me avoid other planes (and vice versa). I'm still always on the lookout for other traffic, though.

If something goes wrong, it's almost certainly my fault that I didn't notice something, planned poorly, or flew beyond my skills (pilot error), with a small chance that the A&P and/or IA missed something (still human error), a very, very tiny chance that there was a mechanical issue that was not addressable with inspections, and an almost infinitesimal chance of simple bad luck.

Pilots union needs to STFU

[spire3661]

Privacy concerns? Im sorry but if you are part of the operating crew of a modern airliner, the only privacy you should expect is in the bathroom.

Re:OP, you may have a point but you've argued awfu

[GPSguy]

And, yes, pilot privacy is a concern because certain well-known air crashes have involved the airline and/or even government falsifying data to put the blame on the pilots (cue fingers wagged at France).

One of the, if not THE, most common causes of aircraft crashes issued by the National Transportation Safety Board is "pilot error". But, there's a reason for that. There's a lot that can go wrong in an airplane, and we're trained to do things about almost all of them (having a piece of FOD penetrate your delta-wing fuel tank on takeoff and essentially render your plane a molotov cocktail looking for a place to die excluded). When a private pilot ignores worsening weather and meets cumulo-granite, that's pilot error. Continued flight into known icing conditions, ditto. Running out of fuel, yep, same thing. Now, two out out of three of those are little-airplane-related, and the third often is, but running out ouf fuel has happened to the big-iron drivers, too, and they didn't admit it to get priority or emergency handling from air traffic control. By the same token, sometimes, pilots are required by COMPANY regulations to do things a particular way, and that comes out as "pilot error" too. And that is something that should be exposed to scrutiny. But, by the letter of the law, anything that happens on a flight is the responsibility of the senior pilot on the aircraft. There's a lot more that goes into Pilot In Command structure, too, but that's for another post.

Re:It's absolutely ridiculous

[drerwk]

TWA800 - fuel tank exploded.
Rudder goes opposite control input- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_737_rudder_issues - many crashes

AF 447 - likely due to pitot ice

So, if it is money the odds are the pilot, but it is hardly unheard of for a plane to fail.

Time/cost/hassle to get certified, plus liability

[garyebickford]

The biggest impediments are in the huge difficulties to get any new technology past the certification process and the cost of insuring against liability. (The liability issues around general aviation were ameliorated somewhat about 10-15 years ago with the passage of a law limiting the 'long tail' liability for older planes.)

My personal case in point - when I was taking flying lessons a long time ago, you could buy a brand new CB radio for about $50. An airplane VHF radio with not-that-much-different capabilities cost over $2000 at the time, had lousy audio and relatively poor reception compared to the CB radio.

The airplane radio had to pass both FCC and FAA (and, I think a couple of other institutions) certifications, each of which cost the manufacturer over $1 million for re-certification every time they wanted to change a resistor. Each of the parts had to go through the same process, which generally took several years. So the aviation radio was built out of ten-year-old parts using 8 year old designs, and the cost of each improvement had to be amortized over a few thousand units - so just getting certified can cost 1/4 to 1/3 of the cost of the part.

And the radios still suck.

Then, liability insurance was also about 1/3 of the retail cost of the radio. At that time if a private plane crashed, everyone within a mile of the crash sued the manufacturer of every component that had ever been on the plane. Still today, if a company makes a part that is on a commercial airplane, they are likely to get sued if the plane crashes, even if their part had nothing to do with anything, and their liability is essentially unlimited.

In one example I knew about (about 1985), a guy forgot to put fuel in his plane, took off and crashed into a house about 1/4 mile from the runway. One of the companies that was sued was the maker of the original OEM starters for that brand of airplane. They were sued for $millions. It cost them almost $5 million in legal fees to prove they were not at fault, even though their starter was not even on that plane - it had been replaced years before. They got out of the business, and never came back.

TOday we have the worst of possible worlds - the regulatory environment punishes innovation and makes it impossible for small companies to compete due to the infrastructure required to meet the regulatory requirements, and the liability environment stomps on them while they're down. So we have nothing but big monolithic industry giants with every incentive to not innovate, to not put the 'new thing' on. Boeing is being amazingly courageous in building the 787. They are betting the company not only on the marketability of the plane, but the potential liability.