Leafing through an old copy of New Scientist I came upon this wonderful
idea in the letters to the editor column. It's so simple and elegant in
hindsight - I found myself wishing that I had thought of it.
To give it its due, here's the entire letter sent by Gerry Nolan of Sydney, Australia to New Scientist. (Printed in 16th September 2009 issue.)
"Questions on the safety of modern aircraft raised in your report on the loss of an airliner in the mid-Atlantic on 1 June may never be answered if the plane's "black box" flight recorders cannot be found (13 June, p 19). The drawback of the current system of on-board black boxes is that they may often not be found, so valuable information as to the causes of accidents is lost.
Other reports of the incident mentioned that before the crash some of the plane's flight data was sent by satellite. This made me wonder why all flight data can't be sent by satellite for every flight. This data could then be recovered from a "virtual" black box, regardless of the physical inaccessibility of the crash site.
The Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System (ACARS) that was used to send data from the doomed aircraft allows only limited data to be transmitted. But why not combine satellite communication with the internet to record a much greater range of data? Once the transmission has been received at an internet node, of which there are thousands, it immediately becomes available worldwide.
The technology for this already exists. There are well-established standards for digitised transmission, and encrypted transmission is used for many internet communications. If the data were continuously transmitted and recorded on the ground, the crash investigators would have instant access to it, and would no longer have to wait for the physical black box to be found - if indeed it ever is.
Automatic warnings and alarms could also be added at both ends. What's more, the exact location of the aircraft would be known, allowing rescue missions to get under way without delay. For the overwhelming majority of flights that are completed safely, the recording could be automatically wiped when the plane lands."
A couple of points I'd like to add here. The use of a virtual black box shouldn't always preclude the continued use of on-board black boxes. In the case of loss of contact preceding a crash, the on-board black box, if found, can reveal important additional clues as to what went wrong. It already does that now, but what Gerry's brilliant idea suggests is that the black box also be continuously backed up using the internet.
Secondly, while Gerry suggests that flight data of successful flights be wiped after the plane lands, I find myself believing that storing the data for a few more flights - possibly with a window of a few weeks - should instead be stipulated. In the case an aircraft is lost, one can analyse not just data about its current flight but also see if anything suspicious cropped up earlier - and if no action was taken by the airline/operator. (Current black boxes record data for anywhere between 30 minutes and 2 hours, overwriting earlier data as they go along.)
Simple and feasible as the idea is, I doubt though that the airlines would be in a hurry to embrace something like this. As an economist would put it, there are misaligned incentives at work here. The airline business isn't flying high at the moment and any expense adding to the possible safety of flying is just that - an expense with no one to pass on the bill to.
They find it worth their while to try and sell us on-flight internet access so we can update our facebook pages instead.
[Original pic by Telstar Logistics]
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