The article above says that they were only searching a 90m x 90m square, to a depth of 1m ... so about 50cm thick over the bottom of the holds once they had the material on the ship, perhaps.

The CVR was found on the night of the last day of searching.

Does anyone think we will ever see a transcript?

Yes, for the major accidents in Indonesia for the past 8 or 10 years, in the English version of the reports, KNKT has included a detailed translation of the CVR transcript (timestamps, who spoke the words, etc.). Some phrases or sentences are summarized (i.e. "PA announcement made to passengers") and some direct quotes / detailed info is included for what KNKT considers more relevant to cause.

Just FYI: Some national investigative agencies routinely include full transcripts as appendices to their reports and some do not. See Annex 13, Sections 5.12 and 5.12.1 for the ICAO position and guidance.

The agencies can discuss it all they like, but the practicality will come from the manufacturers, the likes of Honeywell etc. You can't require what isn't available on the market.

Actually, you need both, the technical feasibility and the regulatory framework. Thales or Honeywell can design marvellous things, they will remain very expensive prototypes in the absence of regulatory material, to ensure their marketability. Requirement and Advisory Material will provide some minimum specs as well as ensure standardisation (a vital aspect for CVR/DFDR), and will typically mandate the equipment or give it some kind of credit (replacing older equipment or allowing further operational possibilities) so that it can be access the market.

As an example, EASA has published various NPA (Notice of Proposed Amendment) and is funding research on the topic, just Google it.

WHBM

Not to jump on the wagon, hello ADS-B OUT

armagnac2010

Most commercial aircraft are still flying around with the same model of CVR and FDR they were delivered with decades earlier. It is rare that updated recorders are fitted to existing aircraft, and it's very expensive to do so. To mandate retrofit would require an Airworthiness Directive - and those have to go through a cost/benefit analysis to justify the expense, and it's very difficult to quantify the financial benefit of improved data recorders.
There are still commercial airliners out there flying around with the old foil style recorder - in fact about ten years ago I was investigating crash FDR data from an analog foil recorder (the only engine parameter was EPR - and that of questionable accuracy).

mnttech

"Not to jump on the wagon, hello ADS-B OUT"

ADS-B-Out provides a minute fraction of the bandwidth that would be required for real-time FDR/CVR streaming.

ADS-B-Out is a welcome advance in aviation and will surely provide benefit, but, as Dave suggests, there are still BIG issues re bandwidth when we are talking about real-time streaming of all CVR-FDR datapoints for all commercial aircraft.
Just as importantly (IMO) is the ongoing discussion of the intent of CVRs and FDRs. Adequately protecting the privacy of the information (especially from CVR) and ensuring it is used solely for its intended purpose (official accident investigation to ascertain cause and contributors) is problematic with streaming.

A single Starlink channels can give 200 mb/sec and the average number of planes in the sky over the last few years is 10000 at any one time giving about 20000 bits per second from one channel assuming they are all equipped. This is from one channel and there are many available.
Bandwidth is not really an issue

, but costs are.
Over continental airspace bandwidth will definitively be if using conventional Comms links, which are already saturated with mode S data., outside VHF coverage you will need satellite comms.
Satellite comms are still very expensive because all privately owned or run , and airlines are rejecting the idea of mandating it. Been discussed already for years within ICAO.
And as Dave pointed out already, ADS B-Out is not made at all for this.

How much is "very expensive"? If they all have to do it there is no competitive disadvantage

They're happy enough installing the internet for passengers

My point was that once the ADS-B mandate (at least in the US) was put in place, technology expanded to meet that requirement and more. I agree that the bandwidth is not there, nor was I saying ADS-B is the answer, I was simply showing that the FAA mandate (10 years prior to 1/1/2020) drove industry to come up with solutions.

Would it be feasible for ADS-B to output useful parameters at a relatively low refresh rate under normal circumstances, but in a recognised abnormal situation where certain parameters are exceeded, for the system to increase the amount and/or frequency of data transmission? Not to replace FDR data, but to augment it and allow investigators access to some early data more quickly.

How about this. The FDR and CVR keep ticking away as usual but, and here's the rub, under some circumstances the data they capture is also transmitted. The hard part would be defining those circumstances but they could be as simple as any slight deviation from expected parameters. Bandwidth is not the issue since engine data is transmitted and passengers get internet access. Far from perfect since some of the context might be missing in the case of total loss

Ok , this was discussed here many times before over the last decades, and was even the subject of an ICAO working group in the past . .In a nutshell : technically feasible, yes on paper , but the cots to set this up are enormous and the benefits did not match the expenses.
It is not only the transmission costs of using the Satcom , the amount of data to uplink and collect but also the storage infrastructure needed and the eventual retrofit to existing fleets all of it to be borne by the aircraft operators.
They all have said a big NO at the time . And since decisions like these are always done in consultation with airlines, no chance to mandate this against the will of the airlines I would say.
Yes because it is a commercial business decision, they believe if helps them getting more valuable business pax , and they sell the time at a premium .

Int'l Aviation Agency
 

Reference was made to past discussions within ICAO -- so here, a question about that.

Where grizzled (738) referred to past discussions and noted specifically AF447 & MH370, were these discussions in the context of the subject, Global Flight Tracking? I was present (observer status) for part of those. Were there other discussions on the subject at, for example, the Air Navigation Commission?

Where ATC Watcher (753) also mentioned past discussions, were those separate from the Global Flight Tracking focus? [Plus 758, working group.....added]

No doubt offices of Permanent Reps have little difficulty getting into ICAO records quickly, but a cheap-seats SLF/lawyer gets by with a little help from my friends (please).

Global Flight Tracking and FDR/CVR streaming are two separate issues.

You beat me to it, Dave.

They are somewhat related, but only in the sense that global flight tracking became a hot topic issue due to M370 (i.e. if we were far more advanced with global flight tracking we would have fewer reasons -- note I didn't say "no reason" -- to consider FDR / CVR streaming).

OTHER than in the event of an accident, under what circumstances and how frequently is FDR/CVR data accessed? Not often? Then real time remote transmission/storage (and its technical challenges, complexity, fallibility, associated bureaucracy, costs and other hurdles) seems like an unduly expansive response to the problem at hand.

Like most black boxes, SJ-182`s FDR was retrieved and read efficiently. It is SJ-182`s CVR which proved difficult to locate (in part because the ULB separated from the CSMU sub-assy of the FA2100-style recorder.)

One solution: enhance legacy FDR & CVR devices to be more reliably easy to find.

K.I.S.