FAA Mandates Major Aircraft "Black Box" Upgrade

coondoggie writes "Earlier this week the FAA mandated upgrades and updates to aircraft voice and data recorders within the US. The goal of the updates: to assist future investigations with 'more and better data' from accidents and incidents. The 'mandate means manufacturers such as Honeywell and L-3 Communications as well as operators of airplanes and helicopters with 10 or more seats, must employ voice recorders, also known as black boxes, that capture the last two hours of cockpit audio instead of the current 15 to 30 minutes. The new rules also require an independent backup power source for the voice recorders to allow continued recording for nine to 11 minutes if all aircraft power sources are lost or interrupted. Voice recorders also must use solid state technology instead of magnetic tape, which is vulnerable to damage and loss of reliability.'"

If they want

[amRadioHed]

more data from crashes it seems to me that the obvious solution would be to just ease up on aircraft maintenance requirements. Leave it to the government to always pick the hard way.

We should try to find a way to built the plane out

[Joe The Dragon]

We should try to find a way to built the plane out of the stuff that the black box is made from.

Re:It sounds so easy but

[tompaulco]

As is, a black box weights 25lbs or more easily...
It contains tons of instruments...
That IS quite impressive. Using black box material, I wonder if there is a way to make the plane weigh only a few thousand pounds while carrying hundreds of tons of cargo.

Did Giuliani join the FAA?

[teamhasnoi]

to allow continued recording for nine to 11 minutes if all aircraft power sources are lost or interrupted.

9 / 11? Odd arbitrary range of numbers.

Re:Did Giuliani join the FAA?

[shadow42]

They didn't mention in the article that the boxes have to weigh less than 42 pounds.

Re:It sounds so easy but

[garett_spencley]

"because if any of those stresses caused a hardware glitch that overwrites or erases the log, you get to tell the FAA that you really don't know why that plane crashed. Oops."

No problem. We'll just tell them that CowboyNeil shot it down.

Re:We should try to find a way to built the plane

[evilviper]

We should try to find a way to built the plane out of the stuff that the black box is made from.

Better yet, try to find a way to make humans out of stuff that can withstand a 900 MPH crash...

Re:You'd think

[Anonymous Coward]

Not if you knew how many of these things recorded the pilot's last B.J.

Re:It sounds so easy but

[XJHardware]

Big deal. Corn survives a trip through my G.I. tract without any problem. It's amazing stuff. Do you know what kind of forces it has to endure there? Build your black boxes out of corn.