John, thanks.
I appreciate that the DFDR can be downloaded by cable. We used to have the FDR replayed in our replay center once every six months (late '80's) before we stopped doing FDA completely for some years, but with a large fleet and turn-times of less than an hour these days, downloading from the DFDR isn't practical.
Flight-testing every parameter that the QAR is provided by the FDAU isn't practical either, and in today's extreme cost-restrictive airline environment, isn't possible. The QAR being used downloads over 1800 parameters from the narrow-body Airbus fleet type many of them system-oriented, (valve positions, flow rates, discretes) as well as FCU and FMA text annunications. We can't download ECAM messages. We download some, but not all FMGC entries. We do lat/long but it's only as accurate as a non-GPS FMC-calculated position.
Re,
the DFDR can be downloaded quite simply by plugging in a cable externally and dumping the memory .. and I generally do this myself .. easy peasy. . .
Neat - good operation and clean. We have our mtc people replay the QAR cards when the fleet transits a main station. We couldn't possibly do it ourselves of course but it's great your system is working. Ours is not at all reliable in terms of getting all airplanes before the QAR card is full and data is missed.
The protocols have been agreed with the Regulator .
The Regulator's involved!!?? Interested even?! Wow, how'd you manage that? Where we are the regulator won't even support data security let alone FDA Programs. They say "do FDA" and that's it. We tried to get them interested in the above question (data validity, data protection under SMS) and it was an impossible task. There are no regulations regarding FDA here whatsoever - just, it's "nice" to have, under SMS. That changes next year I believe in terms of requirements to pass the IOSA audit process.
This fleet has the FDR downloaded as the aircraft are not fitted with QAR. I did investigate the practicalities of installing QAR but the cost didn't warrant the utility. Had such an installation been pursued, the data would have been picked off in parallel with the DFDR.
Thanks. We're considering WGL (wireless ground link) using cell-phone technology. We download about 4 to 6Gb of data daily.
Data interpretation is absolutely key in any and all of this and, unless one has years of experience and has flown, requires some line pilot input of some kind first to have credibility with the line guys and second to be able to interpret the data effectively. I'm speaking of a large fleet here and a large number of terminals/ATC and weather environments. I realize that not all Programs would necessarily require a pilot or that it can't be done effectively but keeping the above in mind, in the end, having an experienced crew member's eyes examining the data is invaluable.
Another thing - we keep all the data. We have about 4Tb (terabytes) of 320 data now and have a means to mine the data with new operational or commercial questions instead of using standard FDA analysis tools.
You've helped me with the key question though - why even consider the data "different"? But - we have that. Depending upon the event, sometimes the FDA data is dismissed. That's what's causing me to ask the question here.