In this day and age wouldn’t it be trivially easy to gather and record flight data and cockpit chatter in real time via satellite or similar?
So, your internet has never gone out? Plus the bandwidth from instruments to the box is always going to be higher than to a satellite.
I’m not sure how much data the black boxes collect, but that could be an issue also. They can limit storage by purging data once the plane has landed, which you can’t do with a satellite.
We have a couple of airline pilots here that can probably comment on this, but meanwhile here’s my understanding which perhaps they can elaborate on. To some extent what you’re asking about already happens. There are at least two near real-time systems already in operation on all or most airliners. One is ADS-B (Automatic dependent surveillance–broadcast), although that’s mainly a position reporting system that broadcasts things like flight number, position, speed, altitude, destination and ETA, and some other stuff. The one that come closer to real-time aircraft status information is ACARS (Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System) which transmits various flight operational data, and has been helpful in analyzing flight data after accidents in the absence of recovered black boxes, most notably in the case of AF447 which vanished over the south Atlantic, though both the flight data and voice recorders were eventually found.
In fact, there was some discussion after AF447 of extending ACARS to provide something closer to an online version of a flight data recorder. The problem I believe is that the bandwidth requirements are too high for the currently available satellite network, and ground-based communication is insufficiently reliable. Actually neither is sufficiently reliable in terms of the rock-solid reliability that is needed. Also, I know that at least from the viewpoint of flight tracking websites available to the public, which mostly use ADS-B, communication is lost over the ocean and over certain large sparsely populated areas like the Amazon because ADS-B is ground-based.
Black boxes are not much of a burden in terms of cost or weight, and being local, have all the needed bandwidth plus can reliably record all pertinent data up to the last moments before an accident. They will probably always be there even if something like ACARS is extended to provide much more information in real time.
On the reliability front, especially consider that when these systems are needed is precisely when a very large number of things are going wrong. It’s not just “Does your internet ever go out?”, it’s “does your internet go out when your house is on fire?”.
Planes have internet, so sure, data is going back and forth. But not reliably enough for critical safety data like that.
There’s also the cost of it all (regulatory work, tech development, certification, purchase price, regular inspections, maintenance/repair, etc, all for the entire global fleet of commercial jets), which has to be weighed against the value of lives saved. In other words, how many additional lives could be saved if we switched from black boxes to high-reliability satellite links? This comes down to asking how many plane crashes result in CVR/FDR data being unrecoverable, AND for which successful data recovery would have been expected result in policy changes that would save future lives. The answer is “not many.” Take MH370 for example, lost at sea and never found, except for a couple of pieces that washed ashore a year or so later. Never found the black boxes from this flight. If the plane had been spewing data in real time to satellites before it crashed, what are the odds that that data would have resulted in changes to the aviation industry that saves lives in the future? How many lives do we think that data might have saved?
Airplane regulating bodies have very conservative cultures. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
Black boxes work very well for the task they were designed for. It’s quite rare that they can’t eventually be found, and it’s usually in the context of something like Malaysia flight 370, where the entire aircraft vanishes.
And that case did lead people to call for satellite tracking of aircraft. If they knew where it went, they probably could have found the black box.
Chemical plants use similar control and safety systems as aircrafts.
All safety critical instruments are Hard wired per code. Soft links don’t have the reliability to match.
I hate it when that happens.
Black boxes automatically record over old data. Earlier units only recorded about 30 minutes, I think new units keep a longer time interval but I’m not an expert on the details.
Sure - but there is a matter of reliability. When that sort of uplink proves to be as reliable and informative as the old black box technology we can discuss making the switch. More likely, aviation will go through a period of using both (we’re sort of entering that phase right now).
Some have actually continued recording briefly after an accident, for a minute or two before loss of power. They are, relatively speaking, inexpensive pieces of equipment that don’t weigh a lot and have a good record of survival and being useful.
Just popping in to say, my cousins shop manufacturers them. They are orange.
What about inside? I’ll bet it’s very black in there.
When closed I’m sure.
Or when someone is actively trying to prevent your data from reaching the satellite. There’s the problem of hardening it so someone can’t disrupt your data pathway for nefarious purposes.
Not much to add to what’s been said. In a nutshell:
The accident recorders today generate far more data than could be offloaded in real time in dense airspace. There’s still vast areas of the world where data link coverage is spotty and limited to tiny data rates & total bandwidth. The big innovation coming out right now is continuous location tracking (and pretty much only location tracking) even over the oceans where there is no radar. So when an accident does occur, the search phase is truncated and it becomes vastly easier to find the wreckage (or more urgently / importantly any survivors) within a much smaller circle of uncertainty. Innovation & change in aviation moves slowly because of the international nature of rulemaking and the very heavily regulated nature of everything. Plus the extreme reliability requirements; this isn’t like some website undergoing continuous change and upgrade that amounts to “invent it as you’re going along”.
I have installed a few hundred of them during my days at Boeing. We called them Flight Data Recorders.
IMO, I don’t see any justification for doing this since the reliability of two engine commercial aircraft is just astonishing. Growing up in the 60’s, man, you’d see an big commercial air crash somewhere in the US on the news every few months. Outside of 9-11 (and the crash in NYC in November of that year), I’m always drawing a blank about the last big Crash. I mean, it just doesn’t happen anymore.
That being said, if another Malaysia flight 370 were to occur and the location is not resolved, I don’t believe the public would stand for this again. I think that was eluded to in an earlier post that work is actually being done in this area.
With the rise of Elon Musk’s Internet network, the ability to track aircraft via a satellite uplink in the middle of ocean would be an excellent opportunity to provide a minute-by-minute attitude and speed data. Capacity would not be an issue here, as the relative bandwidth of several thousand commercial aircraft would be still be minor compared to a few folks down loading pirated GoT. Cost-wise, the hardware would be the major chunk of change, as well as paying for priority data-streaming.
One thought that came to mind is if the aircraft declares an in-flight emergency or a serious anomaly, the satellite network could enable an automatic increase in uplink bandwidth to handle the full of flight parameters that are already being recorded in the black box. In theory.
About as useful as two spare tires in your car.
(As for the regulatory angle, I know, I know. Worked both in the field of satellites and the nuclear industry, DoD + NRC = Paper Cuts/Scars)
Major accidents are far more rare than they used to be, for sure. The first passenger jets, the deHavilland Comet, the 707, and the DC-8, seem downright dangerous by today’s standards. Before its redesign, the early Comets truly were dangerous. But accidents still happen (the 737 Max remains grounded even today), and the main reason there are so much fewer of them is largely because of learnings from crash investigations, with black boxes being a major source of information. To imply that accidents don’t happen any more and therefore we shouldn’t strive to improve the quality of flight data collection in every possible way is a Titanic level of hubris.
I mentioned that there were suggestions of increasing the amount of data in ACARS messages after AF447, but nothing was actually done. I’m not aware of any current efforts in that direction at present, for all the reasons already stated.
Right, but, no matter what happens in a chemical plant, they can still find it afterward.
Not the full FDR data load, but yes, in an emergency the systems rolling out now both increase the volume and types of data flowing out, and signal ATC and the airline HQ that something is amiss. The definition of “emergency” includes a list of serious mechanical issues or a pilot action to push the “tell everybody we’re having a problem” button.
They’re working towards a definition of how far off planned course constitutes a “emergency”.
The challenge is that we often maneuver for legitimate reasons. And ref MH370, if the pilots keystroke a new plan into the computer then the airplane dutifully follows the new plan, is that “off course”, or is that a legitimate change in plans which happens every day on most flights? How much change is too much change? In addition to the routine minor shortcuts and small maneuvers to avoid individual blobs of severe weather, remember the worldwide industry does hundreds of diversions to different airports than originally planned every single day for weather or mechanical or medical problems. “Crying wolf” is a gigantic issue here.
Particularly out in oceanic airspace we’re often a couple dozen miles away from the official route working to avoid flying through thunderstorms. Perhaps not even talking to ATC since comms out there are flaky too. Special collision avoidance procedures are used since we, and any/everybody nearby, are all ad libbing our response to the weather as we see it. We sort it out among ourselves and all is well.
The last remaining areas of the world where airplanes maneuver as needed while monitoring and ATC are tenuous at best or even completely absent are also the last areas where mysterious disappearances can and do happen. And mysterious disappearances seem to unnerve the public far more than do conventional accidents.
We won’t fix the mystery problem until / unless we fix the command and control and surveillance pieces globally. Which is coming together as we speak type, but is not yet fully baked.
Deepwater horizon was operating at an ocean depth of about 35,000 ft comparable to aircraft altitude.