Beyond the Black Box: Accidents Needn't be so Mysterious

Interesting article, Keith.

I think the cost question is misapplied, though. The $15K/retrofit can be compared to the cost of recovey of a black box (like the current crash by Air France off the island of FdN, Brasil).

My guess is these incidents become national disasters, so the country may be paying for rescue & recovery operations, not Air France/Airbus. It seems like the cost of one crash investigation would be huge and "$15K each" is a pittance...

Isn't Southwest Airlines testing an in flight wireless option for 4 of their units this summer? If you can get internet to customers it's possible to stream even video out. This would pay for itself after a while and if installed initially without a black box on a plane might be more cost effective...Maybe I should talk to Boeing instead of posting this on here. Oh well.

We can put men on the moon, but we are unable to replace the stupid traffic light signals designed 70 plus years ago. Seems like we need a plan B for the black box. Hey I got it a redundant system that works by satellite.

this should be cheaper than the search and retrieve option for a downed plane and the black box.

this should be cheaper than search and rescue for planes and black box without this information.

Here's some ideas: Set up a digital repeater system on commercial aircraft flying on the same route. Use packet switching technology to communicate vital data back to base. Augment with low earth orbit satellites.

If the aeronautics industry can't find a cost effective solution in the age of Moore's law, they have no business making Titanic assertions about the notion that foul weather cannot bring a jet down.

It is unbelievable that a vessel carrying over 200 passengers cannot be tracked in real time.

As mentioned, airlines shy from anything which adds to their cost structure. This is especially true in these economic periods where some carriers examine each and every ounce of weight to minimize fuel burn. Margins are thin. Yes, "commercial aviation could benefit from... a less detailed," version of the Space Shuttle data collection system, but can you imagine the cost? There are thousands and thousands of aircraft in the air at any given minute. Using satellite and land based systems to collect second by second data from aircraft systems, to say nothing about cockpit voices, would require literally thousands of large computers and rows upon rows of data storage devices... large computer centers, expensive real-time telecommunications links, and mostly for the sake of the minute number of incidents where the black box cannot be retrieved?

Honeywell's Reavis is right, "no one’s been able to build a business case..." Because the the cost far outweighs the reward.

DRS Technologies, Inc., headquartered in Parsippany, NJ, already produces an all-in-one deployable recorder and beacon system and has for years provided this system to fixed- and rotary-wing aircraft, primarily to the U.S. and other international militaries. The system deploys from the craft when a flight incident occurs, floats indefinitely in water and its beacon immediately emits a signal, allowing rescuers to readily find the crash site and recover the recorder. The system is either mounted to the outside of the craft or installed just under the skin. It is currently being evaluated by the FAA for use on commercial aircraft.

Here's a simple and cost-effective temporary upgrade to the black boxes until telemetry communication of flight data is adopted -- make black boxes that float. Granted that this won't be a benefit to the majority of crashes that take place over land, but it seems absurd to have to expend large financial and manpower resources in a possibly fruitless attempt to find them at the bottom of a vast ocean, as is the case in the current tragedy. It would obviously be easier to locate them on the ocean surface, even allowing for movement by currents.

Since planes travel the same routes like buses or trains. Why not leverage the other aircrafts in the sky? Simply send your signals to the trailing and preceding airlines on the current or nearest flight paths. You tell two people, and they tell two people and so on and so on.... That way, 3 planes have each others data.

few years ago I started planning the PBB = "paralel black box". the flowing data in real time can save some disasters before they happen, let alone finding the underwater black box.not all of them. all insurance and commercial companies may save BILLIONS by helping to build the needed new system