Why isn’t audio in commercial airline cockpits recorded and streamed back to a control tower?

501 views

I’ve never understood this – I figured it must be because of pilot unions or something along the lines. It’s archaic that we physically search for black boxes rather than have it streamed. And to that point, why not have it video recorded as well? It’s a common practice across many professions – how there can be any justification against it?

In: 4

11 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

It’s not just audio that is recorded on the black boxes – it’s *all* flight parameters that are recorded. That includes audio, altitude, airspeed, attitude, switch positions, control inputs, and just about anything else you can imagine. IIRC the black boxes only save the latest data (something like 15-20 minutes worth) since there is so much. That’s asking a lot to stream and store to a ground based system for the hundreds of airplanes in the air at any one time.

You are viewing 1 out of 11 answers, click here to view all answers.