BLACK BOX TECHNOLOGY NEEDS IMPROVEMENT

[AVIATOR]

Air France crash sparks black box debate for data streaming

 While search teams scour the Atlantic ocean for the black boxes of Air France flight AF447 before their signals die out, aviation experts are considering satellite data streaming to collect vital flight data in future.

An airliner's black box -- which is made up of a flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder -- is designed to withstand a crash and emit a signal for about 30 days afterwards. If it is not found by then, the data is unlikely to be recovered.

Many military aircraft already use data streaming, sending flight information real-time via satellite to ground stations.

But the massive bandwidth and sophisticated infrastructure needed to manage and process data from tens of thousands of commercial flights per day could make it prohibitively expensive.


"Data streaming is currently technologically possible, but technologically impractical," Dan Elwell, Vice President Civil Aviation of the U.S.-based Aerospace Industries Association (AIA) industry group, told Reuters at the Paris Air Show.

Richard Hayden, President of Canada's Aeromechanical Services Ltd, thinks he has an answer to the question of cost.

The company's automated flight information recording system compresses data, allowing it to send 10 times more from an aircraft in the same bandwidth than with a standard satellite communication, dramatically cutting the cost to the operator.

Hayden said the system can be programed to start transmitting data non-stop as soon as there's a problem on board, and that this could have sent crucial information about the June 1 Air France crash that killed all 228 people on board.

"Today we have a situation where there's a possibility, if not a probability, that the FDR won't be recovered. All we have left is a very small set of messages," Hayden said, referring to the automated maintenance messages the A330-200 sent in its final moments, charting problems in all onboard systems.

Data streaming may be able to supplement black boxes, but not replace them, L-3's Coffey said. "If you're not able to recover the black boxes, there are going to be a lot of questions that remain unanswered, that should be answered." 

[Eldorado82]

Air France crash sparks black box debate for data streaming

 
Many military aircraft already use data streaming, sending flight information real-time via satellite to ground stations.
But the massive bandwidth and sophisticated infrastructure needed to manage and process data from tens of thousands of commercial flights per day could make it prohibitively expensive.

i'm dealing daily with broadband eqipment we produce. this technologu is veru uniqe for phones and internet, broadcasting stationery. for aircraft there would have to be other solution. the technology of the BBA (BroadBand Acsess) is still raw, i  think. the idea of streaming data in aircraft should being thinked over many of times befory applying it to mass production, because it will have hundreds of malfunctions of their own

[AVIATOR]

When we read on the news that "the search is still going on for the black box flight recorder", after an airliner has gone missing, few would know or give a thought to the millions that search is costing.
Many times that flight recorder is several kilometres down in the ocean.
Something has to be done to advance this essential technology and I think it is world governments who should collectively pay for it. In the end it is will be cheaper and less worrying than the physical and sometimes fruitless searches for the flight recorders.
If many military aircraft already use data streaming and cost is the criteria, then civil aviation should be covered as well.

[Eldorado82]

I think that army aviation have much much more data to transfer than the military one. In case that we can promiss 100% passtrough all the data it should be ok. But again there are much wider possibilities of data loss during stream data

[shawn a]

So... How much data is recorded by the black boxes per flight?
Take the longest flights as an example-- How many Gigabytes, or Terabytes, or whatever would be accrued on say, a 16 hour flight?
When a 2 Terabyte external hard drive is now as small as a thick paperback, how about multiple black boxes on widely seperated parts of the aircraft? Some on heavy parts that perhaps would be easier to find, and some on parts that might float.
I have no clue as to how much data is recorded on a flight.
I saw a photo of what looked like the vertical stabilizer aboard a French ship, I assume it was floating.

[AVIATOR]

I have a better idea for ocean crashes. Why not have the box mounted in the aircraft where a small  door flies open due to sea pressure as it descends and make the box buoyant enough to float to the surface with a radio signal device?

[shawn a]

Not a bad idea-you'd need some kind of salt-water detector. Most of the world's lakes would not present the depths and current dispersion that oceans do.