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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Chapter 5: Mary Roach explains the deaths caused by aircraft crash disasters. After having discussions with injury analyst she gains knowledge and makes notes. She publishes a book for others to know human remains can be evidence theses disasters.
Activity #1 FLIGHT A kid named Zits who lives in Seattle, is only fifteen years old. He’s tall, skinny, ugly, and sometimes mean. He also has forty-seven zits and that’s where he gets his name from. Zits is Irish, Indian and is a foster child.
Flying alongside the clouds at high altitudes; to hear nothing except the thoughts in my head and to go to far away destinations on a weekend is just some of the reasons I enjoy flying. I start out early in the morning heading out to the local airport. At that time in the morning, I can feel the chill in the air. It is so quiet at the beginning of dawn. I know when I am close to the airport; I can smell the aviation fuel burning from the aircraft on the runway. Once I arrive, I head straight to the aircraft hangar where I left my aircraft the previous day. Next, I would walk around the aircraft to do a visual inspection of any damage to the aircraft that may have been done on a previous flight. If there is some minor damage, I log it in my flight log. Once I am done with the preliminary outside inspections, I move inside the flight cabin where I set the instruments for the day’s flight. Once the instruments are set, I crack my window slightly and yell, “CLEAR.” I turn the key to the right; the propeller starts to turn with a clank, clank sound; suddenly the engine comes to life. WOW, what a feeling that is to hear the engine comes to life. I place my headset on my head and say, “Clermont, WNS77 with radio check, Clermont.” The tower replies with, “Clermont, WNS77 radio check, load and clear, Clermont.” The thrill of flying has always had a place in my heart and being a part of the Experimental Aviation Association, also known as EAA, has help me feel closer to my desires of flying with the heavenly bodies. The main goal of the Experimental Aircraft Association is to bring individuals, like myself, together and share in the joy of all parts of aviation. This can include homebuilt aircraft, exploring new technology in the field of...
The investigation was also one of the largest international law enforcement endeavors of its time (Birkland, 2004). This tragedy, like most devastating events, changed the course of history and is a directly affected aviation safety as we know it today. The forensic findings during the investigation also helped change aviation safety policy and procedures. The result was improvement in training for airport security personnel, examination of quality control issues and heightened aviation security regulations (Birkland,
The National Transportation Safety Board determines that the probable cause of this accident was the failure of the flightcrew to monitor the flight instrument during the final 4 minutes of flight, and to detect an unexpected descent soon enough to prevent impact with the ground. Preoccupation with a malfunction of the nose landing gear position indicating system distracted the crew's attention from the instruments and allowed the descent to go unnoticed.
January 15, 2009 a plane took off from New York’s LaGuardia and on its way to Charlotte, North Carolina. (“Editors,Chesley”) (“Airplane Crash-lands”)Part way through the flight a flock of geese hit the plane, damaging both engines and the thrust no longer worked. Immediately,
The Colgan Air Flight 3407 was a very interesting case to look at. On February 12, 2009, at 10:17 pm, flight 3407 crashed at a house in New York after the pilots experience a stall. Flight 3407 was scheduled to fly from Newark, New Jersey to Buffalo, New York. The NTSB reported the cockpit voice recorder (CVR) revealed some discrepancies both pilots were experience. The first officer did not have any experience with icing condition but icing was one of the reasons the plane went into a stall. On the other hand, the captain had some experience flying in icing condition. The captain was experiencing fatigue, which indeed, made him unfit to recover from a stall. With that in mind, the Human Factor Analysis Classification System (HFACS) will give insight of some errors both pilots made.
Although the flight was scheduled to depart from JFK Airport at about 7:00 p.m., it was delayed due to a disabled piece of ground equipment and concerns about a suspected passenger mismatch with baggage. The airplane took off at 8:18 p.m., shortly at 8:25 p.m., Boston air route traffic control center (ARTCC) instructed the pilots to climb and maintain an altitude of 19,000 feet and then lower down to 15,000 feet. However, at 8:26 p.m., Boston ARTCC amended TWA flight 800's altitude clearance, advising the pilots to maintain an altitude of 13,000 feet. At 8:29 p.m., the captain stated, "Look at that crazy fuel flow indicator there on number four... see that?" One minute later Boston ARTCC advised them to climb and maintain 15,000 feet to which the pilot replied: “Climb thrust”. After an extremely loud and quick sound, the cockpit voice recorder stopped recording at 8:31 p.m. At that moment, the crew of an Eastwind Airlines Boeing 737 flying nearby reported an explosion in the sky. TWA Flight 800 aircraft had broken up and crashed into the sea, 8 miles south of East Moriches, killing all on board. (1,2)
Travelling at a speed twice that of sound might seem to be something futuristic; however, this feat has already been achieved almost 40 years ago by the world’s only supersonic passenger aircraft-The Concorde. Concorde brought a revolution in the aviation industry by operating transatlantic flights in less than four hours. The slick and elegant aircraft with one of the most sophisticated engineering was one of the most coveted aircrafts of its time. However, this was all destined to end when Air France Flight 4590 was involved in a tragic disaster just outside the city of Paris on July 25, 2000. The crash killed 113 people, but more disastrous was its impact. The belief and confidence people had with Concorde gradually started to fade, and finally Concorde was grounded after two and a half years of the crash. Official reports state that the main cause of the crash was a piece of metal dropped by a Continental aircraft that flew moments before Concorde, but, over the last decade, the report has met a lot of criticism, and many alternative hypotheses have thus been proposed.
The book Flight written by Sherman Alexie is about a 15 year old part Native American
Modern day airplanes contain many parts compared to the first aircraft developed by the Wright brothers. A modern day airplane contains a cockpit, a turbine engine, wings, winglets, horizontal stabilizer, vertical stabilizer, rudder, elevator, flaps, aileron, spoiler, slats, and fuselage (body of the airplane). A cockpit, which is located in the front, is the control center of an airplane. The pilots operate the airplane with the assistance of numerous equipments in the cockpit. In the cockpit, the pilots can know lots of information about the airplane, such as the amount of fuel in the airplane, the altitude, speed, and they can see all the nearby approaching airplanes on a screen in the cockpit. The turbofan engines are located below the
Plane crashes occur for a number of reasons. There seems to be a consensus with the general public that flying is dangerous, engines fail and planes crash. That is true some times, although the majority of plane crashes occur largely due to a combination of human error and mechanical failure. In much of aviations accidents mechanical failure has been a contributing factor. It is impossible however to blame plane crashes on one reason since events leading up to an accident are so varied. Reasoning for plane crashes can be placed in a broad number of categories.
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