Ian W
13th Dec 2018, 12:49
Yet again we are witnessing a crash into water that cannot be properly investigated because the recordings are maintained onboard the aircraft with weak acoustic 'pingers' with cheap batteries.
https://thepointsguy.com/news/lion-air-funding-search/
https://www.bloombergquint.com/business/ping-from-lion-air-jet-s-cockpit-voice-recorder-is-disappearing#gs.c92LDzA
It is about time that these continually failing devices were replaced with either continual recording to a repository over datalink or redesigned in a way that would actually allow them to be found if the crash is in a body of water.
In the recent case there is no way of knowing whether this is an aircraft problem or a mishandling problem perhaps with the crew doing fault finding rather than recovery.
Technically, a continual recording on an IP connection is trivial. Yes if severe loss of control and 'unusual positions' may interrupt the signal but the build up to the problem would be already recorded in a safe repository. The costs nowadays are also trivial as more aircraft are flying with broadband comms that are 'always on' and the cost is for the service not per packet. So adding a data stream is not a technical or financial problem.
Like the ELBs that never work, this is an area that should be given more attention.
https://thepointsguy.com/news/lion-air-funding-search/
https://www.bloombergquint.com/business/ping-from-lion-air-jet-s-cockpit-voice-recorder-is-disappearing#gs.c92LDzA
It is about time that these continually failing devices were replaced with either continual recording to a repository over datalink or redesigned in a way that would actually allow them to be found if the crash is in a body of water.
In the recent case there is no way of knowing whether this is an aircraft problem or a mishandling problem perhaps with the crew doing fault finding rather than recovery.
Technically, a continual recording on an IP connection is trivial. Yes if severe loss of control and 'unusual positions' may interrupt the signal but the build up to the problem would be already recorded in a safe repository. The costs nowadays are also trivial as more aircraft are flying with broadband comms that are 'always on' and the cost is for the service not per packet. So adding a data stream is not a technical or financial problem.
Like the ELBs that never work, this is an area that should be given more attention.