Thanks a lot, mm43. A report a minute works out to $15/hr, of course. Say there are 500 airliners beyond VHF on average, that works out to $7500/hr, right? That totals a staggering US$65,700,000 a year.
When was the last time a plane was lost like AF447? Such a recommendation isn't to be taken lightly.
Back to my original question: It's easy to come up with a SWAG, Scientific Wild Arsed Guess of the cost of CVR and FDR in every plane, most of which never crash. Figure $200K for hardware and installation, and $10K per year to haul the boxes and wiring, and another $10K maintenance. Multiply that by what, 10,000 planes?
Now, how often has a CVR or FDR revealed previously unknown information that led to prevention of a future accident?
GB