No, it doesn't. That's all in the camera unit, which washed up on the beach where someone found it.So, basically, the data recording capability of a smartphone.
Same as with other examples upthread (lorries and the like), the camera serves as a "poor man's FDR" by videoing the instruments and flight controls. It's not comparable to passenger jets, where FDRs record a wealth of information, especially on aircraft with digital systems. AI171 is actually a good example, because FDR (and likely CVR) established that the fuel cutoff switch was flipped. Ye olde FDR wouldn't have recorded parameter 35g.

No, just the non-crash protected camera. It's in the report:
"The cockpit camera records 4K video, intercom audio and radio communications, and GPS position
both internally and to a removable flash drive inserted in the front of the camera housing. The internal
memory retains only the most recent 3 hours of video and is not user accessible. Recording starts
automatically when the helicopter battery switch is turned on and stops when it is turned off."
A CVR would not tell them that the pilot was holding a sandwich and grabbed the cyclic with the "wrong" hand. meaning he could not control the collective.

An "air transport" level FDR would've easily revealed the lack of control inputs on the collective—no camera needed.

But not WHY!
Were both pilots there? Was the PF eating a sandwich? Was somone attacking them?

In GA/Rotary, cockpit cameras are becoming more common as retrofit and in some cases an OEM installed option from manufacturer.

Retrofits are often driven by a client for FDM purposes,

Not limited to just audio and visual.

• Cockpit images
• Intercom system audio for crew and air traffic control (ATC) communications (optional).
• WAAS GPS (latitude, longitude, ground speed, vertical speed, GPS altitude, etc.).
• Attitude data (pitch, roll, yaw, etc.).
• Acceleration data (G forces).
• Rates of rotation.

Obviously apart from visual cockpit data the other recording parameters would be superfluous for transport cat aircraft.

Draw your own conclusions.

Appero

Many years ago, American Airlines briefly had cockpit cameras on some airplanes to provide "entertainment" to the pax. Apparently recognized as a bad idea:

Well, apparently the FaceBook link won't copy and paste into this thread. But it was 1976 on DC10s

I certainly do understand the sensitivities to airline crews having a camera in the cockpit. It is not nice either being watched, or thinking you're being watched. I would oppose cameras in the cockpit, until the pilots [unions/groups] accepted the idea. I wonder of the idea could be taken toward acceptability by an automatic delete such that after a completed flight, all the video is deleted. But, if the flight ends in an accident, the video is to be retained. Then, of course there comes a discussion of "how much" accident - I haven't thought through that part!

Perhaps, instead of a camera, lidar, which would simply record motions of pilot's hands in certain zones of the cockpit only. That would show who moved what, but not much more. No need for faces to be recorded.

I can say, that as an invited participant in the investigation into a fatal flight test accident, I was "lent" the cockpit video from the flight before, where the same maneuver was flown (and nearly resulted in the accident which did happen the next day). That video entirely made clear what had happened during the accident flight (substantiated by ADSB and radar data). Without that video, two pilots would have been blamed for something which ultimately was found to be largely not their fault.

Done right, and with everyone's acceptance, it could be helpful.

CAP 762 (referenced above) notes that rear-facing cameras provide little benefit, and recommends against them; they recommend that identifying shots (i.e. camera angles that show the crew's heads) be avoided entirely. So recording faces is not even on the table, one should hope.

I am now retired, but always trusted my training provider to use sim recordings sensibly and found them useful - however, I would not trust management at some companies I have worked for to sit the right way round on a toilet seat, let alone to not abuse such material, so "no, unless recordings are protected". Seamless' post #38, point 1 gets my vote. Not a fan of the rest.

First, mandate FDR and CVR for all CAT aircraft regardless off mass/weight, then start gold plating.

My 2 (dinosaur) cents.

If the main use is for accident investigation, the video recording could be encrypted and accessable only by impartial authority, AAIB etc . They could be supplied with an app to access the recording. Could even be encoded onto the FDR.

Just a software problem, and may deflect some of the objections ?.

Yes
Install the camera(s) in the cockpit.
Recording to be solid state and capable of recording minimum of 2 hours.
The physical recording equipment to meet the same standards as for the FDR and CVR.
Access to the recording in line with access provisions to data on FDR and CVR.

From the ATSB

IF the focus is 'pilot suicide', a couple of things to keep in mind.
First off, a camera is easily defeatable - just a piece of tape discretely placed over the lens is all it takes - no need to mess with circuit breakers or the like.
Second - if a video conclusively demonstrates pilot suicide - what are we going to do differently? Several years ago (I think it was right after Silk Air), I sat down and went through various records. I quickly found ten crashes where pilot suicide was at least strongly suspected (and that was before Germanwings). Yet what has the industry done to address it? For a while, there was a mandate that you couldn't leave one pilot alone in the flight deck (which I think was just a 'feel good' and did nothing to address the real problem) - and I think that's quietly gone away at many (most?) operators.
So, if we have a cockpit video that proves pilot suicide - what will we do about it?

Correct. Which is why the CCTV would need to be streamed . And so the act of defeating the camera would itself be captured and sent to a ground station.

​​​​​​​In my mind, MH370 alone is sufficient to warrant this.

To repeat, what would be done to prevent a suicide? Pilot covers the lens on a washroom break, comes back and crashes the plane. Well we would know what happened after the fact, but that’s not addressing the problem proactively. IF, this accident were believed to be suicide, the video would not be able to definitively prove it—hands move the switches but that doesn’t prove it was an error or suicide.

The point in trucking was to identify fatigue, to identify other drivers who may caused the accident, the use of phones while driving, etc. When a plane cuts in front of an airliner video might have a point identifying the miscreant.

Streaming is easier said than done. Currently, things like aircraft and engine monitoring are not streamed, some system on the aircraft periodically sends packets of information. Newer technology like Starlink makes real time streaming more feasible, but not without issues (and of course costs). Further, satellite antennas will often lose 'lock' when an aircraft is doing even normal maneuvers - add in something dramatic like a loss of control and the likelihood of capturing the relevant data by streaming gets rather remote.

As for if someone quietly slips something over the camera lens (or perhaps the camera simply stops working due to a fault). What now? There are literally thousands of aircraft in the air at any particular moment - you want to hire a roomful of people to monitor for camera malfunctions or blockages - and then do what? Call the aircraft and have them divert because a flight deck camera isn't working?
Early in the ETOPS era, Boeing did a study that showed the average diversion due to an engine shutdown cost the operator hundreds of thousands of dollars (often over a million) - it was money well spent by an operator to take proactive steps to prevent shutdowns so as to minimize the associated diversions. How loud do you think the operators (not to mention all the inconvenienced passengers) are going to scream if they get diverted to the Azores because a flight deck camera quit working, or the Starlink satellite link failed? And in the meantime, an actual suicidal pilot already flew the airplane into the ground before anyone on the ground could take action?

I agree with those posters that say this is reactionary and merely appealing to the clamour of the ig aren’t public. How a video feed for the DFDR would aid safety is a mystery, it might make post crash investigations a little simpler but would it fundamentally improve safety? I don’t see why it would. if someone is adamant on committing this act deliberately they’ll easily find a way to take the camera out of the equation so again we are back to punishing the rule abiding majority

I also agree that this merely aids in giving us the how but not the why- basically where we are already.

we might be able to watch who did xyz but is that going to add much to such investigations? Given how often I see line pilots talking about fatigue and yet this almost never makes it way into any discussion from regulators/investigators makes me really wonder about how serious anyone is to tackle issues, instead it seems like we just want to paper over the cracks and move onto the next thing….

I looked into this in the context of rail, searching for "video surveillance suicide prevention", and found a number of good studies. Not one of them suggested that simply putting a camera up prevents anything; on the contrary, they're talking about using the video surveillance to detect suicide attempts and send someone to intervene. They found that access restrictions have an impact, but that's kinda difficult to transfer over to our issue, unless you envision pilots going to work in an ops center and flying their aircraft like a drone. Try to sell that one as a "safety improvement"!

What some think helps--but the data is scant--is giving people access to crisis hotlines; it may not have much effect, but then putting a couple of signs up doesn't cost much, either. If your colleague was thinking about ending it all, would they have a phone number they could call for support without fear of losing their job?

But anyway, to answer your question, if--very big if--we had streamed camera surveillance in the cockpit, and if--another very big if--it was found that suicidal people don't care about living but do care about being on camera, then we'd have software watching all of those screens, and if one was blank, then it'd call cabin crew and say, "your cockpit camera just went blank, you may have a suicidal pilot up front, go do something". That'd be using the camera to detect a potential suicide attempt early and effect an intervention. Personally, I don't think it'd prevent a single suicide.

As in other areas of politics these days, you have people stoking unfounded fears to drive their agendas. (It's absolutely mindboggling that chemtrail bills made it through state legislatures in the US.) Their demands don't have to make sense; they exist simply so that a complaint can be made that they're not being met.
That's what's going to drive a "cameras in the cockpit" campaign if it ever gains traction.

With respect, I think you are missing a point a few of us are trying to make. I am speaking from AVMED background - not pilot or engineer.

As always, we are talking about risk management / minimisation. Not risk elimination.

No one is suggesting real time monitoring or diverting planes if the CCTV goes offline or sending up a jet to have a look. That’s not feasible.

All that we can do is hope that the potential perpetrator is sufficiently concerned about their legacy that the high likelihood their actions will be known AFTER the event will give them pause.

That wouldn’t have stopped 9/11 or Germanwings
It may have stopped SilkAir where a pilot pulled the CB for CVR
it may have stopped MH370 where a pretty sophisticated plan may have been used to create ambiguity
It may have stopped this where a pilot appears to have chosen the ambiguity of using the FCS rather than simply pushing yoke down.

It won’t be 100% effective.

But perfection should not become the enemy of “hopefully some good”
​​​​​​​

Most aircraft already have the button to erase the CVR. Nothing stops that erasing the video too. This is not, however, compatible with streaming.

As for detecting tampering, I'm seeing a surprising lack of imagination.

• RIPS can power at least one camera (like it does the cockpit area microphone) and the video recorder.
• Ensure breakers for the camera are within the camera field of view. 787 has a lot of electronic circuit breakers and if the recorders are on those, then you presumably get a timestamped log of which MCDU/whatever requested them to be turned off and when.
• Multiple cameras that can see each other, so you know exactly who covered it up.
• Sudden darkness = camera 'fault'. Probably MEL one camera, no dispatch if more than one 'failed'.
• Carry out a self test on aircraft startup, and possibly even on an ongoing basis. That could be using image recognition to make sure that the PFD test patterns appear and disappear at the appropriate times, or even reading the altitude/airspeed/current time off the PFDs to make sure no-one used the 'stick a picture of a cockpit in front of the camera' trick.

Little of the above actually prevents tampering. But it produces clear evidence that it occurred. Assuming tampering goes into FOQA, crew will not be covering cameras merely for personal comfort.

The FDR is a tiny, tiny amount of data by modern standards. I would say stream the FDR if at all possible. That poses relatively minimal privacy issues and will lead investigators much more directly to any wreckage, containing the CVR/CVVR.

Interlock the transponders so you can turn one off only by turning the other on.

I'm coming back to this:
It was published in 2006 by the British CAA, and this is the "executive summary":I've read through much of the thing (though I only looked at 1 of the 4 scenarios), and the executive summary reflects my own impression as well: "Although image recorder systems do provide some benefits, this research has not found them to be as effective as has been postulated" and "Use of image recorders in isolation could be actively misleading" pretty much collapse the case, at least for aircraft with comprehensive flight recorders. (Note that the NTSB shows mostly helicopter crashes as examples at https://www.ntsb.gov/Advocacy/mwl/Pa...mwl-as-02.aspx ).

I can see how it would make accident investigators' jobs easier and give them more confidence in their assessments with investigations involving jet aircraft. But I can also see how leaked footage of "here's pilot X making the fatal error that crashed the plane" showing some pilot making something absoutely benign would hurt the field as a whole: video makes it easy to misinterpret something and convince others of it. I have seen this a lot with unidentified lights in the sky, which, when you've worked out where the camera was and when the footage was taken, turn out to closely align with a known flight track. But many people remain convinced they've seen something special because they have it on video, and they distrust the explanation.

Video may be a good option when you don't have anything better. If all the investigators have is an iPad with flightaware, then a cockpit video showing some instruments and the pilot operating the controls would often be very valuable.

But on a big air transport with an fdr that logs every switch down to the coffee pot in the galley? It's rarely worth it. And I think CAP 762 showed that back in 2006.