# Shouldn't commercial airlines duplicate their "black boxes" in the cloud, in real time? Why not?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/shouldnt-commercial-airlines-duplicate-their-black-boxes-in-the-cloud-in-real-time-why-not/796786>\
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion\
**Created:** [September 20, 2017, 6:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/shouldnt-commercial-airlines-duplicate-their-black-boxes-in-the-cloud-in-real-time-why-not/796786 "2017-09-20T06:00:20Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 2

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**Author:** ![swampspruce](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/swampspruce/32/261_2.png) [@swampspruce](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/swampspruce)\
**Post date:** [September 21, 2017, 9:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/shouldnt-commercial-airlines-duplicate-their-black-boxes-in-the-cloud-in-real-time-why-not/796786/21 "2017-09-21T21:57:53Z")

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_Not speaking to the airline pros out there_  
Be mindful as well of why commercial aircraft have FDR/CVRs in the first place. They are there to help accident investigators find out post hoc why the aircraft arrived at the incident/crash site. What they aren’t for is real time data analysis for maintenance or looking for cost savings. Some aircraft have systems that do these jobs and a separate data stream for that purpose. It is difficult, if not well neigh impossible to factor out willful abuse/neglect by human beings in the chain if they are determined to do things like fly into a mountain like Germanwings 9525 in 2015, or find a method of circumventing a transponder. What you can do is satisfy what factors led to the crash. Every improvement in airline safety today has been paid for in blood and tears.

Personally, I think it’s only a matter of time before the bandwidth is sufficiently inexpensive that something like real time telemetry of most commercial flights is a reality, much like instrumented military ranges are for fighters. I also think it will be a decade or more away and will likely be an extension of ACARS. Maybe Tesla, Google and Boeing will team up and make massively inter networked airliners. 🙂

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