Recordings of Pilot/Controller speak

[cavelino rampante]

How long do ATC centers store recordings of Pilot / Controller exchange and video recordings of radar screens?

Thanks

[SM4 Pirate]

Different times all over; 30 days used to be standard (for audio), but now days with 'tapes to DVD' technology it's probably stored forever... Some units keep tapes for 30 days; i.e. they've got 30 24-hour tapes, cycled through unless quarantined. 90 days comes into it somewhere (I think for radar replays), but my grey matter dump has got over that bit of info.

In our facility we previously 'quarantined tapes' when needed for investigation, now we dump the relevent period on a DVD and it's there forever in some new fandangled digital (mp3 or wva) format.

[perusal]

In the UK, the minimum requirement is 30 days for Surface Wind Recordings, Radar, IRVR readings and Communications.

[cdb]

At my unit.

We have 20 sets of DVDs, which record up to four days each, so in theory 80 days.

However, there are usually a few sets impounded at any time, and to make things easier we change the DVDs twice a week, so practically speaking RTF recordings are held for about 60 days, unless the tapes are impounded.

cavelino rampante - what have you done? If you haven't heard from your CAA in a couple of weeks, you are probably ok!

[cavelino rampante]

Thanks for the replys. The reason I ask is because I've heard one airline I know of in particular asks its pilots to write down all ATC clearances and the time they are recieved on the computer flightplan. I cant think why if all the data is stored by ATC anyway.