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?
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High bandwidth radio has a range of a few miles. Low bandwidth radio – which is what airplanes use – has a range of ~200 miles, but can only send very low quality audio. If a plane is going to crash somewhere that the wreckage can’t be recovered, its going to be crashing somewhere that radio coverage is non-existent.
Starlink recently began offering a service that provides global, high speed satellite internet for airliners. It costs tens of thousands of dollars per plane per month, in addition to an initial hardware cost in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. Because of the cost, its mostly targeted towards small jets carrying corporate executives so that they can attend business meetings while flying.
Airlines aren’t rushing to bankrupt themselves in order to livestream their pilots because airplanes don’t crash very often and, when they do, its usually somewhere that the wreckage is easy to recover.
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