Camera in the cockpit, yes or no?
 

Pprune has discussed mandated cockpit cameras in jets before, in late 2001: https://www.pprune.org/rumours-news/...it-camera.html . The topic has recently resurfaced in the Ahmedabad crash thread, and management suggested to bring it here. As a discussion starter, I'm quoting two posts from there (the second is mine).

Can you articulate a specific reason or grounds for thinking a camera on the flight deck can reduce the number of pilot suicides? Or is your aim merely to reduce the number of arguments about them?

It seems like a "but the children!" argument, an appeal to emotion. Same with the appeal to MH370 upthread, a camera in the cockpit would have done nothing as satellite communications were off, and the flight recorders are at the bottom of the ocean.

Camera footage from the helicopter would've helped understand what went wrong in the DCA mid-air, but that was a military craft, so...

I had a "page 1 of google results" deep look into rail, knowing that the cab cameras have helped the NTSB before, but then the external camera tends to show more interesting stuff for trains than for aircraft. In rail, camera introduction was piecewise and unregulated, often by companies who wanted to be seen doing something after an accident, and regulation came afterwards (freight trains are still not regulated).
https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/49/229.136If I were to regulate cameras in the cockpit, I'd first try it on a smaller scale, to see if there are unforseen negative effects on safety. I'd answer the question, do pilots behave differently when there are cameras? and if so, is the change for better or worse?

Do training simulators have cameras, and is the footage used to debrief simulator sessions?

The NTSB has also wanted cameras for a long time.https://www.ntsb.gov/Advocacy/mwl/Pa...mwl-as-02.aspx

They also have examples of investigations where camera data would have been useful.

Union objections to cockpit recording.
 

I do not know what current pilot association policies are regarding video recordings, having been out of the business for many years. However there may be a well-founded “folk memory” of distrust of managements to use such data responsibly.

Flight data recorders for ACCIDENT investigation became obligatory many decades ago. Then in the late 60s and 70s more sophisticated recorders became available, including one type used for analysis of aircraft performance during the development of autoland and cat 3 systems. One particular association (BALPA) was involved in this.

At the same time the concept of voluntary reporting of safety events by crew members was being explored. It became clear that the more sophisticated recorders would have advantages in the investigation of INCIDENTS which were not classified as accidents. BALPA was in agreement with this but insisted on a number of precautions against possible misuse.

However a very senior manager had an attitude that was essentially “if an event isn’t due to an equipment failure it must be crew error, and crew errors should be dealt with by disciplinary action”.

Within a few weeks, a very minor event (a tyre burst during a wet runway landing) was mis-diagnosed by the engineers reading the recording, whose report stated that the pilots had not followed SOPs. They were unaware of a critical parameter was not part of the recording and that the crew had reported a minor malfunction. Jumping to conclusions, the very senior manager’s reaction to the report resulted in immediate disciplinary action against the crew. This company’s action not only broke every clause in the agreement they’d just signed, but all the relevant sections in the disciplinary code. The subsequent furore resulted in management job changes and a cringing apology from the highest levels.

Just as significantly, the pilot concerned was one of those involved in agreeing the original agreement. He was also involved in international safety work, and word – often distorted - got around the world VERY rapidly about this. It almost derailed the introduction of the NASA ASRS system, as the opinion was that even if you agree as professionals that something is in the interest of safety, airline managements can’t be trusted to use it responsibly. (Full file available by DM!).

What detailed knowledge of this remains I don't know, but as I said it may remain in "folk memory".

More than fine, as long as you also include automatic fatigue recognition...

CCTV doesn’t stop a crime.
Cockpit cam won’t prevent a crash.
Enough data is being collected.
Its a false safety.
No.

If you're a pilot and object to a video-feed added to CVR on privacy (plus other?) grounds, do you also decline to use a dashcam in your own car, even though it could exonerate you in a crash, or prove the other party brake-tested you etc. and save your insurance getting clobbered?

Not suggesting the two are identical, but it's interesting how quickly we accept video evidence in road transport as protective yet many continue resist it in aviation, where the stakes and standards are even higher.

Yes.

I feel this incident means we have reached the point where CCTV (and probably streaming of this video) is now appropriate.

LMAO.

As accidents involving ambiguous cockpit behaviour accumulate, where 'black box' audio and data don’t fully explain what happened, pressure will grow from the public, media, and politicians to add a visual element to investigations. That pressure won’t necessarily come from regulators or safety experts first, but from paying passengers who rightly expect transparency and accountability. It won’t matter that most pilots oppose it on privacy grounds. If public trust begins to erode, elected officials will respond, particularly in jurisdictions where aviation is politically sensitive or high-profile incidents have occurred. In that scenario, even the strongest pilot unions may not be able to hold the line indefinitely.

We’ve seen this play out before, in the rail industry, several driver unions strongly resisted in-cab video and audio monitoring for years, citing privacy and crew stress. But after a series of fatal incidents such as the Croydon Tram Derailment the political pressure became too great. The Rail Accident Investigation Branch (RAIB) stated that the absence of a cab camera significantly hindered that investigation.

CVVR might not be perfect, but ignoring where the political winds are blowing won’t stop it. If the industry doesn’t lead on this with clear safeguards and standards, it may find itself forced to adopt it under terms less favourable to flight crews.

The day aviation safety will be led by political winds you'll see a lot of empty planes on the ground.

Also, referring to outboard facing cameras on private cars, totally in control of the owner and "single pilot" ground transportation may not be the best comparison ever.

Anyway, for the nth time, anyone willing to also install a fatigue recognition and alert system integrated with these cameras or not? That'd be an undeniable increase in safety...

I take the point about ownership and single-pilot driving, but the analogy wasn't about who owns the car, it was about how public trust in safety tools evolves. Drivers didn’t embrace dashcams because they love surveillance; they accepted them because in a contested incident, having video is better than not.

And like it or not, aviation safety is shaped by political winds. ETOPS, cockpit doors, lithium battery carriage, 5G transmission shielding all came in response to external pressure, not internal consensus. If public confidence is shaken in how cockpit behaviour is understood after a serious incident, politicians will act.

CCTV can prevent crime. Simply knowing it's there makes some people think twice, and using CCTV to more quickly catch culprits can reduce the number of further offenses.

Sorry, you seem to have missed the point, even though you made it: the dash cam presence has more to do with having the edge in the insurance claims process after the crash, not accident prevention. Also, the management piece is missing from your example, and the abuses of employees.
I find that a very poor analogy, or comparison, for the proposed use of in cockpit cameras.

For etrang:
Your blythe assertion needs more data to back it up.
CCTV do assist Law Enforcement with finding perps, yes, but they do not prevent the crime being committed in the first place.
Your assertion of deterrence is suspect.

With that said, we are drifting off of the topic of cameras in Aircraft Cockpits in the Airline Industry. How about we (collectively) not drift further.

I know your point was not about who owns the car and the video, that was mine. Owning a video means you can opt to keep it, share it or delete it, which is quite different than having a camera recording you 13 hours a day, saving a video with the only objective to blame you in case anything happens.

And in this incident it would make no difference whatsoever, as moving the switches produces a sound identifiable on the CVR, and CAM1/2 are easily identifiable from the very same recording.
Maybe it would make the investigation faster, but speed is not really a KPI in aviation safety. In any case even with a video, we'll never know if it was a slip or a deliberate action (I'm not talking about the Air India now) and the cameras must be controllable by a CB, as any other electrical component on board, so it'd be quite easy to turn it off.

Fixed that.
General public only cares about ticket prices and a little bit about the departing and arrival times, nothing more than that.

As far as airline managers are concerned, pilots are just about the most expensive commodity on their balance sheets. Hence, if a manager wants to make his bonus this year he has to demonstrate how he has either reduced his labour costs or increased pilot productivity. If that manager cannot do that.... then he will be gone. This culture gives rise to PERPETUAL pressure on the pilot workforce to reduce terms and conditions. This has been the way for very many years and has lead to the deeply entrenched mistrust we see in the industry today.

Union presence in US airlines is very strong. For that reason I cannot see US pilots consenting to cameras in the cockpit this century. Apart from the fact that the Americans simply don't want it, they make the very good point that to a potential suicide it offers very little deterrent. Until US pilots voluntarily adopt the idea of cameras, then neither will the rest of the world.

Whilst there is no doubt that cameras would make the job of accident investigators slightly easier, it's cost and value as a deterrent to a potential suicide is frankly negligible. AI171's very comprehensive flight recorder has already told us all we need to know. OTOH if you want to trap mental health 'events' amongst pilots there are already several deeply disturbing issues that have been staring us in the face for years.

I found an ALPA statement, but I have no context, so I don't even know how current it is.
Excerpts:https://www2.alpa.org/DesktopModules...3357&Tabid=256

That may be true most of the time, right up until something goes catastrophically wrong. Then, suddenly, the public cares a great deal about what happened on the flight deck, why it happened, who acted (or not) and whether it could have been prevented or better understood. And when the explanation involves ambiguity, missing data, or human factors that can’t be fully understood from audio alone, pressure builds quickly.

It’s naïve to think that political decisions are shaped by what the public cares about on a normal day. They’re shaped by what the public demands after a high-profile failure. CVVR may not be popular with flight crewsm, but it may be the cost of sustaining public trust.

You’ve reframed the analogy to argue against a point that wasn’t made. The dashcam comparison wasn’t about prevention or surveillance, it was about how people come to accept video as useful after an incident, especially when blame is disputed and facts are contested. That’s the parallel to CVVR. It's not about watching pilots in real time, and it’s not about preventing all accidents, it's about understanding what actually happened when the stakes are at their highest.

As for management abuse, the idea that every new recording device must become a disciplinary tool is a slippery slope argument, not a reasoned objection.

Just saw that The Air Current has published an article on this very question. Not trying to summarize it here .... it is not slotted behind TAC's paywall.

Props, absolutely, to the journalist and publisher who, a few days ago, accurately reported on some key content of the preliminary report which then was soon to be released. Props too for providing safety-related content in TAC free of charge.

Stick a bit of Wrigley's over the lens. Problem solved.