In light of the recent plane crash in Pakistan, reports suggest that it will take 6-7 months to decode the black box.
The company that made the black box surely knows how to decrypt their encryption, so why would it take so long?
Also, assuming the encyrption is super-complicated, what sensitive data would warrant such encryption? Is it just voice recordings, or something more?
In: Technology
Assuming, like most others here, that “decoding” refers to the publication of a final repost rather than just reading the data.
The reposts can be some hundred pages of dense technical detail to understand
1. What happend
2. What [chain of events](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_cheese_model) lead to it happening
3. Which measures need to be taken to avoid this happening in the future
Take your pick of [accident investigation authorities](https://www.icao.int/safety/AIA/Pages/default.aspx), you’ll find loads of reports, not only on fatal crashes, but all sorts of incidents that shouldn’t have happened (and there are [loads every day](https://avherald.com/))
Then there is also the matter of who (i.e. which state’s authorities) actually [take part in the investigation](https://www.icao.int/about-icao/FAQ/Pages/icao-frequently-asked-questions-faq-10.aspx). In this case it’ll be Pakistan (because it both happened there and the aircraft was registred there; were those different, add another), France definetly (because Airbus; [CFM](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CFM_International) [engines]), US probably (see: CFM), unlikely UK, Germany, Spain (because, again, Airbus), people from Airbus, CFM, whoever made the Landing Gear, FDR, and whatever else may be found to have occured.
Looks like PIA isn’t doing their own [A320 training](https://www.piac.com.pk/corporate/training/flight-simulator) (website only shows B747 and B777 sims), possibly they’ll want to interview who trained the crew (did the have a history of becoming [task saturated](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Air_Lines_Flight_401#Cause_of_the_crash), not follwo procedures, etc.)
So you get people from all over the world together to figure this out. Let’s say the landing gear guys sort through the bdebris, find all ‘their’ parts and figure out why it didn’t work. That’s one (important) part of the investigation, but maybe it doesn’t really tell you why the aircraft crashed (that stuff [just happens](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LOT_Polish_Airlines_Flight_16) [occaisionally](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JetBlue_Flight_292)), because it did not impact any other systems. Then (or probably in parallel) you’re looking at the engines (which again, [somewhat optional](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_airline_flights_that_required_gliding)).
Depending on how much lab work needed to be done on parts to check for failure modes (and distinguish them from damage due to the crash itself), you’ve spend a couüle of months at least and still have only parts of 1) and 2) and very little of 3).
That stuff [takes time](https://www.bfu-web.de/DE/Publikationen/Untersuchungsberichte/untersuchungsberichte_node.html) (list of German accident reports, first colunm is the date of the incident, the last colunm is the date the report was published; some have taken multiple years).
And when it comes to “reports”, look who’s doing it (and how much they know about aviation), remember “[Boeing 777 will struggle to maintain altitude once fuel tanks are empty](https://external-preview.redd.it/w4ciy2Lb81hGCvDVMFiju8f3YuiDUZimJkyvF3Fc2xM.jpg?auto=webp&s=f1bcafb149054c90a52586b3c7056fc6bfbd9d44)” was a thing. The best thing to do in case of aviation accidents is to forget about them for a year or so), then read the official report. Everything else is pointless speculation.
I hope this is somewhat coherent, I should be sleeping for a while now, [but . . .](https://xkcd.com/386/) 😉
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