Originally Posted by
carlo321
Can anyone explain to me why they are still using FDR's (designed in the 50's) that must be searched at the bottom of the oceans if such things go wrong ? Unbelievable !
1. Satellite bandwidth is expensive. All that aircraft data sent 'just in case' is bandwidth that can't be used for any other purpose.
2. Retrofitting all existing aircraft with new hardware to do so is expensive.
3. In a catastrophic failure, it's unlikely to help, because you need both power, and a working antenna pointed in roughly the right direction, to send useful information.
4. Privacy. The existing ACARS infrastructure already told us what happened to AF447, but only the cockpit voice recordings told us why. I'm guessing most crews wouldn't want everything they say on board sent to a remote database via satellite.
It's certainly doable, but far from simple.