03-29-2014, 11:42 PM
Airline pilot here.
When you hear "Black Box" they are referring to two distinct systems that work in concert, they are physically separate.
1. Cockpit Voice Recorder: A recording of 2 hours of audio. This will not contain the takeoff etc, if everyone was dead onboard it won't really be of any value.
2. Flight Data Recorder: This tells a lot about a flight. Basically it records parameters on just about everything under the sun that happens on the aircraft for 30 or so flight hours. This will show what went wrong physically with the aircraft. It can tell who was flying, and what systems were being used etc.
Some companies opt for a better CVR that can record even longer amounts of time than 2 hours, some up to 30. Hopefully this is the case so we can figure out what happened.
When you hear "Black Box" they are referring to two distinct systems that work in concert, they are physically separate.
1. Cockpit Voice Recorder: A recording of 2 hours of audio. This will not contain the takeoff etc, if everyone was dead onboard it won't really be of any value.
2. Flight Data Recorder: This tells a lot about a flight. Basically it records parameters on just about everything under the sun that happens on the aircraft for 30 or so flight hours. This will show what went wrong physically with the aircraft. It can tell who was flying, and what systems were being used etc.
Some companies opt for a better CVR that can record even longer amounts of time than 2 hours, some up to 30. Hopefully this is the case so we can figure out what happened.
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