Future of the black box

[kbryan]

Hi all,

I'm a journalist, and I'm trying to produce a short film on the development of flight recorders. I'm looking at the history, the current limitations of, and what pilots/the aviation industry envision as the future of flight recorders.

Because of the MH370 disappearance some have called for 'real-time' data streams - I realise the arguments against this practice are the large volume of data that would need to be streamed and the cost involved of using satellites.

Flyht Aerospace solutions think they have a solution to these two problems, by using compressed data streams that can then be decoded back on land.

I'd really like to hear your thoughts what could work in future and what developments in the next few years might make the recovery of current flight recorders easier (I know regulations for longer battery life on black box recorders are due to come in to force at the end of this decade.)

I'm based in London, so if anyone knows of any work being carried out by the British aviation industry or universities based in the UK, to come up with new ways of recording flight data, please let me know.

Thanks for your time.