slats11;
7. Video recording would greatly add to the CVR in the event of an incident. I don't believe this should be released to the public - some things do belong behind closed doors.
NOTE: italics are edited/added comments
While reasonable and understandable, this is a very naive view. I, and most
crews, don't believe any such recordings should be released to the public either, but they will, in one way or another.
Would that it were otherwise.
First, there are diverse interests in "knowing".
Legal approaches are legitimate but cannot use the same data sources, (meaning historical crew and aircraft FOQA/QARs data - SSFDRs and CVRs obviously are used) that is used in a safety investigation, otherwise the safety processes which prevent accidents are at risk or destroyed.
The notion of "the public interest" is often legally more powerful than any laws intended to protect proprietary information including safety information. "Trust us" is often what one hears from the regulator, for example. Though it was and is illegal to release the actual CVR, in a lawsuit in Quebec, the CVR of an accident in which the pilots were killed was released to open court for all to hear. Release of proprietary safety informaiton can, and will be done by the courts.
Second, we know from their behaviour that the media has a voracious appetite for ratings and
will, not might, pursue the availability of such recordings and they
will be provided by someone who has access to the data. The Ostelli book on AF447 is proof of this fact. The "News of the World" illegal phone tapping is another. This is what the media does.
So, if video recording is introduced and an accident occurs, you can expect to see the video on youtube or a "reasonable facsmile", (animation) of same because that is the nature of media and the nature of our present society.
There is no question
regarding your point that video recording would be of great use in many, though not most investigations; the Egyptair B763 suicide descent is often quoted. But there are other ways to obtain sufficient data. Though there are significant problems in changing/enhancing any such recording technologies, mandating an increase in the number of parameters and the sample rates of recording would greatly assist investigations. The argument is again from AF447 where the entire right-side instrumentation, (PFD/ND) is not recorded, the justification being a "statistical sample" is good enough.
Those doing flight data analysis have argued against the merely-statistical approach for these very reasons but regulators also must listen to the airlines which argue against the huge costs of doing more than the legal minimum when designing data frames. (For a good treatment on data frames, refer to CAP731 Approval, Operational Serviceability and Readout of Flight Data Recorder Systems and Cockpit Voice Recorders)
It is straightforward (meaning that the data is available from the aircraft), though very expensive and technically complex to record all text on CRT screen displays, when they appear/disappear and what causes them to appear. Such a level of recording would be monumentally difficult and expensive, (due to multiple STCs), to achieve and analyze but it is possible.
The argument on the other side, the airlines, is the expense and therefore the ROI. The regulators are sensitive to the tremendous costs of requiring airlines to increase recorded information, especially for older types for which wiring, sensors, hardware/software must be installed to facilitate such recording. But such enhanced levels of recording would render moot most reasons for the installation of video recording without increased risk of the data becoming public.
The popularity of animations of crashes, (youtube etc) proves that recorder traces don't sell soap; videos do.