After a year of high-profile airplane crashes, airline manufacturers are still not upgrading the “black boxes” as required by the FAA in a March 2008 ruling. The Federal Aviation Administration “is seriously disappointed with the manufacturers,” the agency said in a Federal Register notice last week.
The original deadline was April 2010 but the airline manufacturers have not managed to meet the FAA requirements the deadline was set decision some time ago.
CNN reported
The rule required changes such as giving cockpit voice recorders 10 minutes of backup power after aircraft systems are lost, and having flight-data recorders more frequently sample movements of controls such as tail parts and foot pedals.
The board has said deficient recorders hampered several investigations, including the crash of Swissair Flight 111 near Nova Scotia, Canada. Voice and data recorders stopped working almost six minutes before the MD-11 plunged into the Atlantic Ocean in 1998.
If you think fines are in order, thing again. The FAA is proposing an extended deadline until December 2010. Boeing is filled with excuses of why they cannot manage to comply with this requirement.
It seems simple. Perhaps Boeing could figure it our if the U.S. government decided to award the new refueling plane to Airbus if Boeing is not capable of changing the black boxes. Heck, how can a company be expected to build an entire plane when they can’t even fix the black box on existing aircraft.
This kind of hesitation on the part of airline manufacturers seems indefensible after the tragic loss of the black boxes in the Air France crash (though it was a different issue, flotation) and the fact that almost every automobile on the road today has a black box that tracks our driving.
In case you weren’t aware, almost every car built in the last decade or so has a “black box” or event recorder that is used in accident reconstruction to determine what really happened. It’s significantly changed how often a manufacturer is considered culpable. Since other drivers are often involved in car wrecks, unlike aircraft, it really helps to sort through selective memory and objectively determine what really happened.
Let’s get it done. The FAA should be firmer with these aviation behemoths.
Charlie Leocha is the President of Travelers United. He has been working in Washington, DC, for the past 14 years with Congress, the Department of Transportation, and industry stakeholders on travel issues. He was the first consumer representative to the Advisory Committee for Aviation Consumer Protections appointed by the Secretary of Transportation from 2012 through 2018.
