Black Box Data

[Keep it stiff]

Excuse this question from a non-technical perspective, but why is black box data still retained on aircraft? Surely in this day and age data could be sent in real time to be suitably stored in the safety of a data-centre?

[HoHoHo]

Too much data and too many aircraft trying to share limited bandwidth.

All via satellite and very, very expensive......

Possibly?

[IforB]

HoHoHo said:

Too much data and too many aircraft trying to share limited bandwidth.

All via satellite and very, very expensive......

Possibly?

Correct. Whilst there are systems to send back a limited number of parameters, it's not in common use with most airlines. FDR data is not needed in real time usually, so there's no driver for it to made mandatory.

ACARS systems will usually fire back aircraft status info to homebase via VHF, HF or Satcom for maintenance reasons, though that is normally a short message report.

[anonymous-user]

It's worth remembering that the aircraft fleet is a bit like the car fleet in that only the newest and latest airframes come out with the new toys. As such, the cost of retrofitting the entire fleet with a suitable telemetry system would be crippling to the airlines. Added to which, generally, for the vast majority of crashes the flight recorders are retrieved intact and a proper investigation and reporting methodology can be followed.

[Le TVR]

To bring this up to date.

The ITU has just set up a study group to investigate real time monitoring of flight data.
First meeting to be held, unsurprisingly, in Malaysia.