Flight Data Recorders, Decades Out of Date 266
Tisha_AH writes "For the past fifty years the technology behind aircraft flight data recorders has remained stagnant. Some of the advances of cloud computing, mesh radio networks, real-time position reporting and satellite communications are held back by a combination of aircraft manufacturers, pilots unions and the slow gears of government bureaucracy. Many recent aircraft loss incidents remain unexplained, with black boxes lost on the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, buried under the wreckage of the World Trade Centers or with critical information suppressed by government secrecy or aircraft manufacturers. Many devices still rely upon tape recorders for voice and data that only record a very small sampling of aircraft dynamics, flight and engine systems or crew behaviors. Technologically simple solutions like battery backup, continual telemetry feeds by satellite and hundreds of I/O points, monitoring many systems should be within easy reach. Pilot unions have objected to the collection and sharing of detailed accident data, citing privacy concerns of the flight crew. Accidents may be due to human error, process problems or design flaws. Unless we can fully evaluate all factors involved in transportation accidents, it will be difficult to improve the safety record. Recommendations by the NTSB to the FAA have gone unheeded for many years. With all of the technological advancements that we work with in the IT field, what sort of best practices could be brought forward in transit safety?"
Out of date? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:tape isn't bad (Score:5, Interesting)
As long as it doesn't burn (which kills any memory type), it's more stable in most situations than the modern memory devices. Remember, it has be stable in salt water, in high impact, humid environments, dry environments, wide temperature ranges, take electrical shock, etc.
Flash is better at all of those things than tape except electrical shock, and you can isolate the module with optical signals and power via induction (with its own fairly complex power supply in there on the other end, thus handling surges) or via optical power, which is horribly inefficient but who cares? It doesn't take much power to write flash, and turbines can be designed to produce basically any amount of electrical power you like.
OP, you may have a point but you've argued awfully (Score:3, Interesting)
Cloud computing? Conflation of data not being recorded and the choice to be secret about what's recorded? Technologically simple solutions with "hundreds of I/O points"?
Rather than hand-waving over every single modern technology which might be remotely relevant to the flight recorder, how about writing down, point by point, each improvement you feel should be made and why you feel it would be beneficial. Mention deployments to flying aircraft as well as destruction testing which has been done. IOW, what that is broken are you able to fix?
And, yes, pilot privacy is a concern because certain well-known air crashes have involved the airline and/or even government falsifying data to put the blame on the pilots (cue fingers wagged at France).
uh...what? (Score:3, Interesting)
...citing privacy concerns of the flight crew.
Not only are you on the job (which means your privacy is significantly reduced by default), you're job involves being responsible for hundreds of lives. I'm sorry that you're worried about people potentially overhearing you and the co-pilot talking about that hot piece of new flight attendant, but recording flight data is just a bit more important.
Pompous assholes.
Conservative Tech (Score:4, Interesting)
Because the pipeline is so long, the FAA ought to, years ago, have put a development program in place. They should model it along the lines of a DARPA program: one- or two-year commitments with substantial deliverables. Want to play again next year? Better deliver this year. When the contract's up, the money's done. They ought to pit competing factions against each other: have development teams one year become destructive testers of someone else's hardware the next year.
Constant telemetry... (Score:5, Interesting)
A direct telemetry feed to ground stations or via satellite could be a very interesting way to monitor the airplanes and give crucial information in the even of a crash, but could not replace an on-board logging device. In the even of catastrophic malfunction, on-board recorders are most likely more reliable than networked data. But in the even the on-board recorder is lost, the telemetry feed could give most of the required information on the systems leading and the events leading to the malfunction.
To some extent, these systems already exist and are used by maintenance crew to schedule maintenance and get early warnings on possible problems with the airplane.
Having a global system that is not company-based, but centralized and international could give not only make incident reconstitution easier, but might also improve transparency on aircraft maintenance on less "serious" airlines and provide real time information (wetter radar feed, wind shear data, turbulence, etc.) to air traffic control and weather forecasters to improve safety overall.
The major technical issue that this would bring is a problem of bandwidth. There are a lot of aircraft in the air and it would generate huge amounts of data. Transmission, storage and analysis would all be challenge.
Re:It's absolutely ridiculous (Score:3, Interesting)
"Well, I don't think there is any question about it. It can only be attributable to human error. This sort of thing has cropped up before and it has always been due to human error."
-HAL 9000
But seriously, the actual source of most plane crashes is a combination of a lot of factors: mechanical problems, pilot error, management practices (such as overworking pilots to the point where they're more likely to commit a pilot error), weather, a certain amount of bad luck, poorly maintained airport facilities (particularly in foreign countries), and errors by air traffic controllers. There's tons of redundancy and other checks to make it hard for any one of these to cause a crash (even pilot error: there are alarms and such that make it much easier for the pilot to do the right thing).
Telemetry (Score:3, Interesting)
According to a TV show I watched on the subject some a while back, British Airways have been taking live telemetry from their planes for years.
Re:It's absolutely ridiculous (Score:5, Interesting)
Really? Air France Flight 447 just falling apart in the sky going 537 mph at 35,000 is from a human failure? US Airways Flight 1549? Emirates Flight 407?
No, humans aren't the cause of all crashes, a chunk of them yes, but not close to "pretty much always".
Checking that out and looking up the causes of the accidents you'll see human error by the flight crew is a cause of some, but mechanical failure is a larger cause of accidents.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Aviation_accidents_and_incidents_in_2009 [wikipedia.org]
And yes, I do have my pilot's license.
Re:tape isn't bad (Score:3, Interesting)
Flash is better at all of those things than tape except electrical shock, and you can isolate the module with optical signals and power via induction (with its own fairly complex power supply in there on the other end, thus handling surges) or via optical power, which is horribly inefficient but who cares? It doesn't take much power to write flash, and turbines can be designed to produce basically any amount of electrical power you like.
X2 on flash. Shoot, the black boxes could be made to do all of those things you mentioned to isolate it, and then the flash itself could be ruggedized in some fashion and have multiple redundant copies.
They could log every piece of information to recreate every aspect of the flight right down to every word spoken and button pushed, let alone flight path.
I think it comes down to the fact that they (pilots) don't want that level of scrutiny. Why not? Well, would you want it in your car?
Re:Constant telemetry...is a reality (Score:2, Interesting)
There is nothing technically preventing this. It's already being done. GE Aviation engines can be fitted with technology to report, in real time, the behavior of engines on a plane while it is still in the air.
It wouldn't be a stretch to extend the telemetry to other plane systems.
http://www.geae.com/services/information/diagnostics/tier.html [geae.com]
Re:Welcome to Drudge-dot! (Score:1, Interesting)
Interesting intro:
held back by a combination of aircraft manufacturers, pilots unions and the slow gears of government bureaucracy
Does the article support the notion of the pilots unions fighting against modernization of flight recorders? No, it doesn't. Does common sense support such a notion? No, it doesn't either.
Really, this is not a place for union bashing. If you have an axe to grind, so be it. But don't try to wield your axe at every conceived opportunity, or you'll end up making yourself look silly - as you just did.
Not that this is the place for Union bashing, but I cant say he is too far off the mark. Besides, the union jab was a tiny bit of the story. Lighten up, Francis.
Can you show me examples where unions DIDNT drag things out with a blindingly strong indifference to everything BUT their members (screw everyone else, we are getting what we deserve dammit!)? Sure its their job to protect their members, but they often do so with extreme stupidity and make choices that negatively affect other groups with no concern for the collateral damage they do. They fiddle while Rome burns.
And yes, Common sense DOES support such a notion if you actually pay attention to the blinding stupidity that is union thinking/actions. Just look at the news and see all the crazy things unions do that dont make sense (unless you are pro-union).
But back to the point...
IMHO Unions are concerned that with more ubiquitous FDR and especially CVR data, it will be easier in a he-said-she-said environment post accident to defend their members' actions and cover any mistakes that aren't able to be proven otherwise.
Think of it this way: would YOU want a permanently mounted GPS in your car tied into your car's brains so the following happens?:
Officer: I clocked you back there doing 70 in a 55.
You: But officer, I wasnt speeding, your radar must be off.
Officer: "lets ask your 'black box'. Nope... thats not what your car is telling me it thinks you were doing 72 actually, and were doing so for the last 5 miles before I clocked you. Oh, and on top of this ticket, 15 minutes ago you drove erratically coming off the line at the intersection of 4th and elm when the light changed green. I can see you floored it and the tires spun out for 3 seconds. Enjoy this reckless driving citation too. Have a nice day. "
Hello? McFly? (Score:3, Interesting)
How about the lesson, "Never save data that can only serve to get you sued out of existance if something bad happens".
Until there's tort reform in the USA to bring us in line with countries like Germany, this data will never be captured or saved.
Re:100% buzz-word compliant, for your protection. (Score:3, Interesting)
It's technology that needs to be improved and can be improved and government/corporation control not of the data (it's already in government/corporation control) but of technological updates that could save lives.
I'd argue that the tech doesn't need to be improved, just current tech applied!
As I understand it, BA already record vastly more information than is required in the black box and retrieve it from each 'plane when it lands. Obviously in the event of an accident this info is often/usually lost because it is outside the black box, but the collection of that flight data from successful flight is still useful. Now how about some of that nifty burst-transmission stuff the military use. How much info from the on-board repository that BA currently fills in-flight for their own use could be transmitted once a critical problem has occurred, or indeed when a pilot (or co-pilot/navigator/steward) presses the red button when any incident occurs?
I also remember watching a documentary about Rolls Royce jet engines and I'm sure it showed telemetry from their engines in flight and anything 'odd' was flagged up so the operator could instruct service personnel to inspect the engines when the 'plane next lands.
Honestly, none of this is rocket science and nothing "new" needs to be invented - just apply the current levels of technology to the problem for a leap forward in available info!
Re:It's absolutely ridiculous (Score:5, Interesting)
You're absolutely correct about redundancy. There's a long chain of things that is supposed to happen before any flight. Here's what has to happen before I fly my little rental Cessna 172:
That isn't even all of it, and the list is more complete for a plane that actually has a black box. There are other things that happen along the way that aren't part of official checklists, including brake checks, validating compass and heading indicator accuracy, using the radio, and just paying attention for anything that doesn't feel right. There are checklists for take-off, climb, leveling, descent, landing, post-landing, and shut-down, not to mention all the emergency checklists. I've got a stall warning horn as well that is a function of the aerodynamics of the plane, and the autopilot lets me know if it's disabled. I fly a G1000 version of the C172 with two big displays, and it's got even more alerts, both visual and audio, to let me know when something is amiss, including when traffic is close (gotta love TCAS). I usually fly with flight following anyway, so ATC can help me avoid other planes (and vice versa). I'm still always on the lookout for other traffic, though.
If something goes wrong, it's almost certainly my fault that I didn't notice something, planned poorly, or flew beyond my skills (pilot error), with a small chance that the A&P and/or IA missed something (still human error), a very, very tiny chance that there was a mechanical issue that was not addressable with inspections, and an almost infinitesimal chance of simple bad luck.
Re:OP, you may have a point but you've argued awfu (Score:2, Interesting)
And, yes, pilot privacy is a concern because certain well-known air crashes have involved the airline and/or even government falsifying data to put the blame on the pilots (cue fingers wagged at France).
One of the, if not THE, most common causes of aircraft crashes issued by the National Transportation Safety Board is "pilot error". But, there's a reason for that. There's a lot that can go wrong in an airplane, and we're trained to do things about almost all of them (having a piece of FOD penetrate your delta-wing fuel tank on takeoff and essentially render your plane a molotov cocktail looking for a place to die excluded). When a private pilot ignores worsening weather and meets cumulo-granite, that's pilot error. Continued flight into known icing conditions, ditto. Running out of fuel, yep, same thing. Now, two out out of three of those are little-airplane-related, and the third often is, but running out ouf fuel has happened to the big-iron drivers, too, and they didn't admit it to get priority or emergency handling from air traffic control. By the same token, sometimes, pilots are required by COMPANY regulations to do things a particular way, and that comes out as "pilot error" too. And that is something that should be exposed to scrutiny. But, by the letter of the law, anything that happens on a flight is the responsibility of the senior pilot on the aircraft. There's a lot more that goes into Pilot In Command structure, too, but that's for another post.
Re:Buzzwords (Score:2, Interesting)
Because black boxes are not always recoverable, and if the box can have some sort of continuous connection and can send the data somewhere safe, you don't even have to search for it. You can focus your physical investigation elsewhere. You can also focus on rescue without worrying about the "clock running out" on finding the data recorder.
All important data should be backed up. Data that is about to be subjected to an extremely hostile environment, doubly so. Flight Data Recorders can survive a lot, but they aren't indestructible, and having them sink intact to the bottom of an ocean with the rest of the aircraft renders them as useless as if they were destroyed.
Any way you can take as much of that data as possible and get it backed up somewhere other than an aircraft that's about to crash is a Good Thing. It may be too expensive to be practical, but it at least merits discussion.
A few crazy ideas:
Install a secondary flight data recorder to a caching device, and hook that up to a transmitter. Whenever the aircraft is in RF range to a towered airport, have the transmitter send as much of the flight data as possible in compressed form to a computer at the airport, along with the aircraft's tail number. Now an NTSB or FAA investigation into a crash can include a request to search airport-stored backups (possibly incomplete, but at least existing) of recorded flight data even if the black box itself is damaged, destroyed or cannot be recovered. There might be some indication of trouble even hours before the crash, and a lot of crashes happen in range of airports anyway so you'd have a pretty complete set of data available before you even send the rescue teams out.
Alternatively, or even additionally, put a satellite uplink on the aircraft and reserve a few satellite frequencies. If a pilot squawks mayday, the flight data recorder starts transmitting the contents of its memory (in reverse order, so the most recent events are sent first) to a satellite immediately. That covers data where the aircraft is outside radio range of an airport. Again, you might not get all of the data, but you'll probably get some of it, even if the flight data recorder itself is destroyed or unrecoverable at the bottom of the ocean.
Hell, you could put radio-linked "repeater" with some memory that ejects itself from the aircraft upon a mayday squawk and continues to receive black box data while in range, then deploys a little parachute and float balloon. The onboard Flight Data Recorder continues to record data and retransmit it to the repeater, which will contain most or all of the data, and have a much more graceful landing and be much easier to recover. That cache could even have a satellite repeater so it can send the data in real time to a satellite just in case it becomes unrecoverable.
Hell, put a few extra terabytes in the flight data recorder and have aircraft FDRs replicate data to each other continuously. If Flight 459 goes down, Flight 128 who was in the vicinity might have a backup copy of some or all of 459's FDR data, and that data will be automatically relayed to the nearest airport when Flight 128 comes in range of an airport, where it can be pieced together with other bits captured by other flights.
None of these crazy ideas eliminate the ability to get the flight data recorder itself if it turns out to be recoverable, it just provides alternate mechanisms whereby some or even all of the data might be backed up before it becomes subject to the risk of being lost forever.