Failures need review

Have you noticed the Black box failures in recent air crashes? I suspect there are a lot of aviation experts scratching their heads at the failure of several of the newer RAM based flight recorders. The most recent failure in the American Airlines A300 crash in New York underscores the seriousness of this situation.

The Flight Data Recorders were put in civil aircraft to assist crash investigators in the event the host aircraft landed abnormally. The data these recorders held could assist in understanding the manner in which the accident occured. The first versions were extensively tested to demonstrate their ability to withstand high G loads, fire, and submersion. These carried magnetic tape in various forms, some even record on to steel bands. These earlier devices held only a few items of information. As experts felt they needed more accident data to help find the causes of more complex crashes, the data capacity of these older devices became an issue.

The increasing reliability of modern electronic technology and the rapid increase in RAM densities (more memory), lead to a change in the technology the aviation safety folks recommended. This change allowed the new black boxes to capture significantly more data about an aircrafts' situation, holding it in non-volatile RAM. Many new features were added (longer record time for instance). The devices are designed to cope with shock loadings and heat, supposedly to even greater limits than the older mechanical devices.

The recent A300 crash in NYC was 2 minutes out, doing only a few hundred knots, when it fell out of the sky. Somehow the RAM in the blackbox was damaged. It may be recoverable, but as was seen with the aircraft that the September 11th terrorists used on the Pentagon, it may not be capable of being salvaged. If data is lost as a consequence of the damage, it could be critical in understanding what occured, and hence preparing solutions to prevent future similar accidents.

The FAA and NTSB probably need to look at the design of these black boxes to determine if the devices, like race cars, need to be designed to crush, rather than just being solid enough to take the beating.