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AIR FRANCE CRASH INVESTIGATION HIGHLIGHTS DANGER OF BLACK BOX DEPENDENCE

June 11 2009

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil – From the earliest days of commercial aviation engineers have been looking for ways to accurately record the goings on of a plane and her crew. As early as 1939 recording devices were being placed in planes, early experiments that eventually led to today’s modern flight data and cockpit voice recorder which have
been essential in diagnosing the cause of catastrophic plane crashes. With a record of virtually everything that has happened on the plane, such recorders have become an essential tool for crash investigators.

As rescue teams and investigators continue to pull bodies from the Atlantic of the coast of Brazil they are coming no closer uncovering what happened to Air France flight 447. Very little wreckage has been found and the ever important ‘black boxes’ have yet to be discovered. With hopes dimming, investigators are concerned that they may never have a full picture of what felled the plane and killed all 228 aboard. Those lack of answers are now causing many to question the continued reliance on little metal boxes with no flotation devices, especially when it comes to airborne disasters.

“Based on what has been recovered thus far, you really can't expect investigators to come up with much about how and why the plane came down," says Vincent Favé, an aeronautic engineer and judicial expert to Time. “What they do have supports the obvious hypothesis that the plane broke up while still in the air. But with so little debris and few victims recovered this late, they'll really need to get the black box to have any chance of finding out what happened.”

Without the data from the recorders investigators will begin to look at the type of destruction present on the few pieces of the fuselage that they have been able to uncover. They will also be conducting autopsies on the human remains that have been found in order to determine how exactly they died which could give clues to how the plane broke up. In flight investigation terms, such diagnosis is called ‘the long way’.

“There is a real danger here. Flight disaster investigators don’t get a whole lot of work because air travel is such a safe method of transportation. Most of the time they are
just sitting around simulating disasters and playing solitaire but they need to be retained on staff because crashes do happen and they need to be prepared and ready to go at a moment’s notice. Their trump over normal crash investigators has been the black box but without that they lose their advantage,” said Scrape TV Airline analyst Jeffry Johnson. “By creating this little box that only they can access and understand they have cut out normal investigators that would study boat or car accidents. That dependence though has put them at a loss in situations like this where, presumably, the box just sinks to the ocean floor. Now they have to conduct forensic investigations to come up with an answer and not just look like they are earning their money.”

Data recorders are designed to withstand massive impacts and direct contact with fire. They are also built to withstand deep sea pressure and corrosion from salt water and come equipped with a locator beacon that operates up to 6000 metres. Contrary to popular opinion, the boxes are usually red for easy identification.

“As important as these recorders are and with such sophisticated technology one
would think that they could rig some kind of flotation device so that they don’t have to go searching. Of course sometimes the devices don’t survive the destruction of the aircraft which invalidates the entire reason for their existence, making everyone’s lives more difficult,” continued Johnson. “The real issue here is that flight investigators have this box that tells them exactly what happened, something no other vehicles come equipped with, and they have become totally reliant on that data. Now they have to work for their money and the issue with that is their skills are a little dull and reduces them to little more than a police investigator, something none of them are very happy to have happen.”

Reportedly French crash investigators are insistent that they will find the recorders if everyone will just leave them alone.

Emil Uliya, International Correspondent

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