I suspect that for commercial reasons all the data would be encrypted. There is no reason for the airline to hold the decryption key that could be held by a trusted third party repository say IATA. It would be possible for the data to require two decryption keys one from the repository and one from the airline. So access is only possible in the case of an accident and not for random trawling by bored airline management.

Ummm, this is being proposed to stop police brutality...not sure this is relevant to voice cockpit streaming debate.

Furthermore, in this day and age all of us are held under scrutiny in our daily lives/jobs to act a certain way. I can be fired now for saying something inappropriate at work. Your argument not to have this technology is to protect those that cant act professionally on the job? :ugh:

Qatar Airways is already testing live streaming of black box data according to this article.

Qatar Airways already testing live black box uploads | Plane Talking

Yes, that's an excellent way to do it. It's probably wise to encrypt it all anyway, so that nothing can be intercepted by a hostile third party. My main point was that the pilot-sensitive data would not be accessed unless regulatory permission was obtained. There should be no reason for pilots to be alarmed.

The regs would probably mandate that all data be destroyed / deep-archived within a set timeframe.

Am I the only one who finds this to be highly irregular? Until the exact cause of this accident is known, is it proper to have engineers from the manufacturer, an obvious interested party in the outcome, advising on the (mis)handling of the evidence? :suspect:

wondering why anyone would think the IATA
 

would be a trusted third party repository?

Civil accident investigations in most (but not all) ICAO countries are based on mutual cooperation from all the interested parties. That's because the intent is not to assign "blame" or "liability" but to find the root cause of the accident so we can improve aviation safety for all.

Airbus (and Boeing) would rather find something wrong and definitely fix it, than having rumours that they covered up a flaw and that their planes are suspected to be unsafe. If the public cannot have confidence in the manufacturer, that's the quickest way for them to lose customers. Besides, even if Airbus were to be found to be at fault, they have insurance to cover any liabilities.

A safety investigation is very different than criminal proceedings in many countries. In Indonesia (similar to the US), any wreckage / evidence sensitive to investigations will be under control of the country's transportation safety board -- unless and until a criminal element is found.

In other countries (such as Italy, Japan), accidents are treated as criminal cases first, and will be under the jurisdiction of police with very strict custody handling / chain of evidence procedures, until criminal action can be definitively ruled out.

In some cases, this "interference" from police and the adversarial nature of criminal investigations have delayed and compromised safety investigations.

On the CVR "debate": The flight deck is a closed office. In normal circumstances what is said there should stay there. There is no way a senior executive would be willing to endure the same level of potential scrutiny, so why should I?

I don't particularly care what other people are forced to endure in their workplaces. Many wrongs do not make a right.

The idea of encryption with a key held by a third party appeals to me very much.

Live CVR transmission
 

Encryption will never work as designed in all jurisdictions. Some CAA/airlines will not subscribe unless they can hold the keys. Just like some don't allow CVR erase buttons, as were prescribed in the original international agreements.

Either that or hackers will be employed to decrypt for surreptitious spying!
If implemented, I can see the newspaper transcriptions of CVR broadcasts.

Some form of DFDR upload may have some short term benefit. But will it outweigh the cost? The accident report will still take just as long to compile. All will happen is that a lot of this bad taste 'armchair investigation' will be avoided.

There is only one event in history where the black boxes haven't been found, so what is the real 'cost' advantage?

In a free society, all information of public interest must be free
 

In this day and age, it is important that as many sources as possible can have a crack at interpreting data that is of public interest. Accidents where people are hurt or die and financial interests are at stake (i.e. all accidents) by that very definition thus are of public interest.

This is not about armchair investigators or morbid sensationalism of the public. But even when there are a few of those, what do you care? What's important is that there are checks and balances *especially* when accidents occur in parts of the world where the facts are often obscured by convenience. Just look at them heave the tail section on board of that salvage vessel. What about the lack of post mortems on the bodies found? This is an absolute disgrace and a joke of an investigation thus far.

The flight deck during critical flight phases is NOT a closed office as much as anyone cannot send whatever they please via their employers email system. It will be read and you will be fired if you engage in inappropriate conduct. And there's nothing wrong with that.

I am of course assuming that there are no airlines left unfamiliar with the concept of a sterile cockpit, and that anything private said outside the sterile phase is not made public.

A big ask, perhaps. But certainly in line with long established office rules in the majority of the world.

Flight data recorder recovered
 

- See more at: AirAsia flight QZ8501: Flight data recorder retrieved; search underway for cockpit recorder - South-east Asia News & Top Stories - The Straits Times

MetroTV in Indonesia reported that it is the FDR that has been found wedged amongst the wreckage of the fuselage. The CVR has not yet been located.

Update: The FDR has now been retreived from the ocean and will be sent to Jakarta for analysis.

FDR recovered, not yet CVR
 

From AirAsia flight: Divers recover flight data recorder | SBS News

A team of Indonesian navy divers retrieved on Monday the flight data recorder from an AirAsia airliner that crashed two weeks ago, killing all 162 people on board, a government official said.

"This morning I had an official report from the national transportation safety committee. At 7:11 we had succeeded in lifting the part of the black box known as the flight data recorder," Fransiskus Bambang Soelistyo, head of the search and rescue agency, told a news conference.

"We are still trying to find the cockpit voice recorder."

Flight QZ8501 vanished from radar screens over the northern Java Sea on Dec. 28, less than half-way into a two-hour flight from Indonesia's second-biggest city of Surabaya to Singapore.

Reports that divers have located CVR
 

RT Breaking News: Reports that divers have located CVR

http://rt.com/news/221635-airasia-black-box-lifted/

Looks like they've now found a crane to move the wreckage off the boat.

http://si.wsj.net/public/resources/i...0111220801.jpg

Source: WSJ

photo of fdr

Divers retrieve AirAsia flight data recorder - Malaysiakini

Messy.

http://media801.dropshots.com/photos...112/004849.jpg

Reports coming through now that the CVR has also been located 20 meters from the FDR.

https://twitter.com/ChannelNewsAsia/...364481/photo/1

Coordinates of FDRs are:-

3°37'20.7"S 109°42'43"E
3°37'21.13"S 109°42'42.45"E

Which is DFDR I am not sure, but they are 21.7 meters apart.

How far away from the tail section are those coordinates? Or was it a Horizontal Stab not a Wing?