PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - BREAKING NEWS: airliner missing within Egyptian FIR
Old 3rd Nov 2015, 14:24
  #670 (permalink)  
A0283
 
Join Date: Dec 2014
Location: Schiphol
Posts: 475
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes on 0 Posts
@Kulverstukas

Any chances there is unprotected FDR in nose equipment bay? Nose part seems not so heavily damaged.
In general you will find the (D)FDR and (D)CVR near or in the tail section. I have never heard or seen a recorder as such in the nose. There are a number of (structural and survivability) reasons for that.
If you look at the accidents of the last 15 years or so, you could also suggest another location, but still the tail section it is.

Depends on your definition. But there is not really a nose equipment bay. There is a Main Equipment Center, which is not in the cockpit section, but behind and below the floor after the forward pax doors.
Two large recognizable units are the nose landing gear bay (ribbed) and the MEC with its trays and wiring (in which many avionics boxes are visible). The bay looks quite good. The MEC looks rather burned, but you need better pictures to be sure.

In general planes these days carry equipment like ('non-hardened') QARs quick access recorders and maintenance recorders. In cases where flight recorders fail or only give partial information, these boxes can, will be, and have been used (assuming they survived). These recorders store even more information than flight recorders. In other cases it is possible to retrieve data from local memory components of systems.

So you have to know what kind of boxes a specific aircraft carries. That is the art an science of "configuration" management. A subject rarely introduced into public accident discussions, but essential in getting to (any and) the right conclusions.
A0283 is offline