The Need for a Better Black Box
With the use of airplanes as a common method of travel, in-flight safety should be a top priority for both airplane manufacturers and the companies that operate them. There should be an emphasis on updating aircraft technology to enhance passenger safety and provide an understanding of failures during flight. Today, during a crash or major in-flight incident, important aircraft information is recorded to a flight data recorder commonly referred to as the black box. Airplanes are generally equipped with two flight data recorders which may be in the same black box unit or separate black boxes. There are “two separate pieces of equipment – a cockpit voice recorder, which records all of the sound and conversations that happen in the cockpit, and a flight data recorder, which records the planes operating functions” (Bogart). This recorded information is critical to the improvement and advancement of safety policies and procedures. Unfortunately, many times the aircraft or flight data recorder is unrecoverable or the information recorded is limited. The lack of proper in-flight data recording and recovery systems prohibits critical data collected during an accident from reaching airplane manufacturers, which limits the ability to improve the safety of each airplane. The loss of such data also limits institutions from implementing new training and policies for pilots and crews that would result in overall improved flight safety. The need for more reliable and advanced in-flight data recording and recovery systems is essential to the overall safety of commercial air travel.
The recovery of downed airplanes and their flight data recorders is an ongoing challenge for search, rescue and recovery t...
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