Flight Data Recorders, Decades Out of Date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?

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

[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.

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

[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:Buzzwords

[rotide]

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

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

[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.

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. ;)

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.