John47;
but perhaps one day
No, I don't think so.
I have seen no reason to be the least bit optimistic about the protection of safety data and information even though under SMS the collection and use of this data is mandated under SMS in Canada.
CVRs and DFDRs as well as QARs and when they are eventually installed, Cockpit Video Recorders, will, under rubric of "the public interest" or, more realistically, the power of the highest bidder (in the US media), always be subject to the possibility that narrow legal interests or prurient media interests, both of which are focussed on money instead of the improvement of the whole system will force court-directed appropriation of safety data in discovery.
Permit me a sidebar...
While some claim that such processes lead to changes and improvements in safety, the process is inefficient and very narrowly focussed on specific items and is largely a collateral result, often with unintended consquences. Witness the latest, where the entire Congress of the United States is collectively setting their hair on fire, (or playing solitaire) over some laptops, intent on a wholesale ban without the slightest input or study from the industry so affected.
Two weeks after two guys got distracted (and never hurt anyone and weren't in any immediate danger), we have Congress making laws to "protect" the flying public from this new, nefarious, insidiosity. It reminds one slightly, of the widespread panic over H1N1 vaccinations.
Good god, we in the profession can only imagine in our wildest dreams, such a keen response from Congress to
all the science and now the accident reports concerning crew fatigue. But you will never see it because it costs the airlines too much. Banning laptops is attaboys-for-free.
To those who understand flight safety and how our system got so safe, a bunch of publicity-seeking congresspeople banning laptops is a joke and the fools are the lawmakers themselves. This is a clear, obvious example of why individual industry incidents cannot, in and of themselves, form a basis upon which policy and law are made.
The case for the protection of flight safety data of all kinds is abundant and clear - it improves the level of safety of an entire industry.
Sorry for the sidebar, but it is an important and relevant understanding in this conversation, and are matters which must be addressed in practical terms if one is going to market one's organization as
the answer to irretrievable flight data of the kind under discussion, (447).