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
The delay you are talking about isn’t really the delay in downloading the data. Usually the data download is done rather quickly. As others have said, it’s the analysis that takes awhile. Aside from that, NTSB (here in the US) hearings and reports can become slightly political and it takes quite a bit of time to get all of the involved parties to discuss/analyze/vote on probable cause and contributing factors.
As a side note, these flight data recorders (the infamous “blackbox” as it’s referred to) have other uses as well. Airline safety departments regularly download the data and company/pilot analysts audit the flights to see where there are potential higher risks in the operation. At my previous airline, I was one of these analysts. It was very fascinating and we were able to improve many of of procedures based on recommendations from those findings.
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