All of us probably have one thing in our personal lives that tops the list of things we wish we didn’t have to spend time or money on.
For the airline industry, black box technology has been that thing. Only modest improvements have been made over the years to these flight data and cockpit voice recorders, and yet over the same time span, wings gained winglets to reduce drag, engines became vastly quieter with larger front fans, and fuselages sprouted bumps to house antennas for satellite Wi-Fi.
We’ve seen so much innovation, and yet when an airliner goes down over the water, we might as well be living in the 1960s. Microphones are dragged by ships or more lately by robotic craft to listen for acoustic pings from the underwater locator beacons on the boxes. In a surprisingly large number of cases, these boxes are never recovered.
Judging by this month’s cover story, the seeds of change have been planted by the International Civil Aviation Organization. The question now is whether they will take root.
The story examines the possible technical solutions (ejectable boxes versus streaming data) and explores the resistance of airlines and regulators to making either of these a requirement. Money is probably a factor, as it almost always is in any industry, but it might not be the only factor. The industry has invested in tracking aircraft with greater fidelity than ever via satellite. In one view, this means there’s no longer a need for a radical rethinking of the black box strategy.
Does the argument make sense? I’ll let you be the judge.
Of course, the revolution could happen despite the resistance. The ejectable-box innovation is being rolled out on Airbus A350s XWBs even without a requirement. The streaming option has been slower to catch on.
No matter how this saga turns out, the innovations won’t get us to our destinations faster or entertain us on a long trip. The best we can hope for is peace of mind that in the rare event of a crash, our loved ones won’t have to suffer as the Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 families have.
Perhaps that is priceless.
