Video Cameras on the flight Deck
 

Why the strong reaction against cameras in the flight deck?

Will they not:

Help accident investigators see what happened, rather than have to guess from audio?

Clear Crews of blame for accidents or events that were not their fault?

Improve flight safety overall?

Interested to hear arguments for and against.

Invasion of privacy?

I'm sure there are other reasons, but feel compelled not to mention them.

What privacy? There are two of you in there, what are you up to??!:eek:

I'm only speculating, trying to remember what the arguments were against CVRs. Though that was many years before my time! ;)

Actually it has already been done, American Airlines had video cameras in the cockpits quite a few years ago. I remember riding on a DC-10 going into KLGA and watching a live feed from the cockpit. Wino probably knows the history of this video in the cockpit with AA. I don’t why they stopped.

I can sum this question up in a short sentence..."None of your friggin business" is what we get up to in there! Sit still and eat your peanuts!

I say we ignore this thread. Obviously not a pilot or perhaps a wannabe this desert character.

Hard to believe they had live feeds from the cockpit at AA though! Something like that should never have happened with a union as strong as AA´s.

I think Rocco from Budapest got out the wrong side of bed this morning!

:D LOL can't be that interesting !

Besides , maybe they're worried about management using the evidence in that 'dodgy landing we won't tell anyone about' :}

Very well argued Rocco, very eloquent :yuk:

Video cameras in the cockpit will undoubtedly follow the same path as many of the other safety "innovations" originally opposed by the unions like cockpit voice recorders, locked cockpit doors and drug and alcohol testing.

First the union will say no way, never, it's not required. It won't help, it doesn't matter, it doesn't improve safety. It's an invasion of privacy, it challenges the pilot's command authority, it's not allowed under the contract etc., etc., etc. We'll have a national strike, we'll show 'em.

Then, a couple of years later the union will say it's a done deal, our hands are tied, there is nothing we can do about it...

>>I remember riding on a DC-10 going into KLGA and watching a live feed from the cockpit. Wino probably knows the history of this video in the cockpit with AA. I don’t why they stopped.<<

I believe American quit using the cockpit cameras a couple of years after the AA 191 DC-10 crash at ORD in 1979. Victims' family lawyers claimed that extra compensation was due since the pax saw the disaster unfolding on the screen in the seconds before the crash.

Of course, no mention of cockpit cameras at AA would be complete without the "gorilla hand" story. Here's one version from, appropriately, the archive of alt.folklore.urban:

_________________________________

Back in the early 80's, American Airlines experimented with video
cameras in the cockpit so the passengers could see the plane taking off and landing. The camera was situated behind the pilots' seats looking forward over the throttle quadrant.

One day, a 737 [did AA have them in the early '80's?] crew decided to have some fun. The co-pilot, who was due to fly the leg, obtained the arm from a gorilla outfit, and wore this over his left arm, so that all you could see on the camera was a huge hairy paw managing the throttles. What really upset the people, however, was that after they had landed, and were taxiing in to the ramp, the captain's hand is seen passing across a peeled banana, which the co-pilot's hand grabs.

American's management thought this was so funny, they gave the pilots 30-day suspensions without pay.

Interestingly, though, one hears rumours about black-market versionsof the video from time to time.

I'm not a professional pilot, however I can see the objections that pilots would have to cameras on the flight deck especially if the management were able to access & store the digital information during or after each flight & use as a stick to beat the flight crew at evaluation time etc... (V1 rotate... zzzzzz... Captain? etc :E )

But, I can also see how useful this information would potentially be to crash investigators (ref sept 11)

Perhaps if the digital video information was stored in with the CVR and overwritten on each consecutive flight & only legally accessed on reporting of an incident it might be a way around the privacy issues?

Of course only my 2c...

FT

I can understand the arguments for video cameras on the flight deck with the footage being used like the transcript from a CVR but, and I speak as a fledgling PPL pilot, I can't see any point in providing a live feed to the pax. I don't think it serves any real useful purpose and, in any line of work, would you want people able to transfix on images of you and watch EVERYTHING you did while at work? I'll be honest - I wouldn't.

This is just a personal opinion but I don't think I'd have a problem with a camera on the flight deck if, post-flight, the crew actively erased its contents. This would avoid any possible perceived abuse of the footage by the company and would still meet the safety requirement.

V1R

Privacy? Get a life! What is the cockpit, your own private boudoir?

If the video is only stored as long as the data on the CVR then what's the problem?

As has been said, arguments for and against, as there were for CVRs, which are now almost universally accepted as being as important as the FDR.

Can't see that a manually erasable recorder is a good idea. Presumably after someone makes a horlicks he'll 'accidentally' manually erase the record.


I feel that the current NTSB policy of making entire transcripts available (minus the expletives, bizarrely) is a bad one. The contents of the CVR should remain private and available to only those who need it for investigative purposes, with only relevant excerpts being referred to if necessary in the accident report.

Right, I'll get down off the high horse now:*

Will pilots, can pilots, ever learn?
 

Boy oh boy. Some people just never learn. They are called airline pilots. Always so keen to believe that “air safety” and “security” are pure entities that will never be used by others in their “power plays” to the disadvantage of pilots. And, in the end, having surrendered access to our work place and decision making responsibilities we find it impossible to retreat and recover what was there before. And that is why in less than a generation the job will be worth buttons.

When voice recorders arrived we - or our predecessors - argued that the information would be misused. The “militant types” who made such arguments were assured by ICAO, various accident investigation agencies, aviation authorities, etc. that the contents of CVRs could “never be heard on the evening news”. Agreements were drawn up. Of course, in the end, because of local laws and other influences which had nothing to do with aviation it happened. It took a while, but it happened. In its final manifestation – in New Zealand – we had the police successfully claiming (and then defending assertively) an entitlement to confiscate the CVR after an accident, with a view to trawling through to the content in order to see if a crime had been committed (and this without prima facia evidence of crime). The deterioration took less than a career span.

With CRM – an excellent and important part of effective flight management – we invited psychologists into our workplace and found that there were some of them who did not have our interests at heart (this is being diplomatic). They got to build empires on our goodwill and came up with some quaint notions about what “hoops” we need to hop through, not to mention “assessment”. THEY decided what was good for us.

And then we have flight data recording and monitoring for “safety analysis purposes only”. Mindful of the previous debacles and pilots concerns we have protocols, agreements, ombudspersons, etc. and plenty of promises. But to make that work you need honourable people who recognise such agreements and will work with the local pilots’ association. In the absence of such agreements and intermediaries “they” can monitor your daily work almost in real time. It is, is it not, interesting that in a certain airline whose name can hardly be mentioned on PPRuNe - called RYANAIR - flight data is recorded but not protected by any agreement? Of course everyone knows that this very same airline would probably prefer to go into liquidation than recognise a pilots’ association (yes, I know they say you can, but you’d have to be seriously naïve to be fooled by that!). So who is going to protect this information or the pilot who falls foul of the system? And from there the disease will spread even to those areas where pilots say "that will never happen here" (as they turn their nose up at the very mention of Ryanair).

Just try getting surgeons to allow VCRs or video cameras into an operating theatre (where the level of risk is multiples of the level of risk in an aeroplane and the need for good ex poste analysis is acute). You’ll learn a few things about how to look after your interests from the reaction!

If I may say so, the person who started this thread and adds the odd cryptic comment is either young and innocent, or a fool, or just not a pilot (I suspect the latter). I do not intend this observation as an insult, but there is a need for everyone to get real about this kind of nonsense. As to the retort that these are matters of opinion, I suggest that the evidence of the past forty years makes them more an issue of fact than opinion.

Well, at least I feel better now.

YOUR workplace atse ?

I don't understand the strong reaction against cockpit video recorders. The CVR and digital data tell enough of the story that privacy can no longer be a concern.

Workplace privacy, whether in the cockpit or in a Dilbert cubicle, has been largely eliminated. Many corporations, for example, now monitor workers internet activity and even have the capability to watch users primary applications usage. The latter is done, in theory, to allow on-line support but could as well be used for snooping.

Rather than fight against cockpit video, which will be a losing argument, fight instead for responsible use and proper safeguarding of access to data. While we may all dislike the publication of CVR transcripts post events, it is a reality.

In any case, in my early days I found in discussion with colleagues that even in the era of no recorded data, some of our actions during stressful times were motivated by the refrain going through our heads "And the board found that ....". This refrain tended to be particularly loud when we had started out doing something stupid.

With regard to AA, I once was self loading cargo on an AA DC-10 going in to ORD. The view on the cabin screen was not of an approaching runway, but rather an infield. About 300' up, the scene slewed rapidly over to the runway for an uneventful landing. The captain, post landing, announced that he had been trying out the auto-land on a clear day so that he could monitor it well. (Don't know if that is true, or just an FO off his game). The real point, however, is that the picture showed only the edge of the PIC and FO shoulders, and no instruments. It might be of value in coordinating terrain path post event, but that's all.

Finally, you are surely all aware that most single seat fighters now are equipped with a HUD camera which reocrds HUD data and out of cockpit view. If the mega-ego fighter jocks can live with such a recording, surely a more rational airline crew can.:D

I think they should install cockpit video cameras just as soon as they put the same equipment in the CEO's office and the boardroom.

R

Very good,atse, very good....

Airbubba,

AA's early eighties B737's were courtesy of the Air Cal acquisition.

You're right about the ORD AA DC-10 that lost (literally) an engine at Vr and subsequently rolled on it's back when one wing's slats retracted at V2. Happened in May, 1979. Up until that point, there was a view through the windshield for the pax.

As far as the general discussion re: "safety", if the government really wants to be pro-active and save lives, hospital operating rooms would be a good start. Allegedly, 200,000 people in the US died unnecessarily in 2003, due to operating theatre errors!

Check this out...recently, procedures have been adapted from the airline industry in the hope that surgeons' will be more inclined to carry out the correct surgery on a patient. They have instituted a pilot type checklist in the hope this will reduce mistakes.

Wow, what a leap forward!

As another poster mentions, the medical industry (which obviously has room for immediate improvement) would lobby furiously against such additional "oversight".

DD.