Black Box on Aircraft | 20 Aug 2020

Why in News

The black boxes of the Boeing 737-800 aircraft which recently crashed in Kozhikode (Kerala) have been found.

• These boxes will help investigators gather information about the crucial events that led to the crash.

Key Points

• About: A black box, technically known as an Electronic Flight Data Recorder, is an orange-coloured heavily protected recording device placed in a flight. It is used to investigate the details of the events immediately preceding an accident.
  
  • Black Boxes are compulsory on any commercial flight or corporate jet where they are usually kept in the tail of an aircraft, where they are more likely to survive a crash.
  • It usually takes at least 10-15 days to analyse the data recovered from the black boxes.
  • Black boxes are also used in vehicles other than planes like railways, cars etc.
• Invention: Australian Scientist David Warren was the first to build a FDR/CVR prototype in 1958.
• Parts: The "black box" is made up of two separate pieces of equipment: the Flight Data Recorder (FDR) and a Cockpit Voice Recorder (CVR).
  
  • FDR records things like airspeed, altitude, vertical acceleration and fuel flow.
  • CVR records the conversations in the cockpit.
• Technology:
  
  • Older black boxes used magnetic tape, a technology that was first introduced in the 1960s. Magnetic tape works like any tape recorder.
  • These days, black boxes use solid-state memory boards, which came along in the 1990s. Solid state memory boards use stacked arrays of memory chips, and are stronger.
  • The FDR contains Crash-Survivable Memory Units (CSMUs) which are engineered to withstand extreme heat, jarring crashes and tons of pressure.
  • To make black boxes discoverable in situations where they are under water, they are equipped with a Beacon that sends out ultrasound signals for 30 days.
• Other Methods to Investigate an Aircrash
  
  • Accounts from Air Traffic Control (ATC) personnel.
  • Recordings of the conversation between ATC and the pilots moments before the crash.
  • Various data recorders at the airport, which would tell about the precise point and speed of touchdown on the runway.
• Limitations:
  
  • In certain cases – like the Malaysian Airlines MH370 flight, they are not found.
  • They still lack video recording capabilities.
• Alternatives: It is being tried to stream all of their essential data directly to a ground-based station in realtime which would eliminate the desperate search for a box that may have been destroyed in a crash, and will be more dependable.

Source: IE