For a few years now, regulators in the United States have been proposing a common sense change that would make it easier to investigate aircraft incidents and accidents (and in turn, make flying safer). While there has been quite a bit of pushback from pilots, there’s some good news, as this change will finally be implemented.
Cockpit voice recorder will start recording 12.5x longer
One of the reasons that aviation is so safe is because we learn so much from every incident, to prevent something similar from happening in the future. This is largely thanks to flight data recorders (which paint a picture of the aircraft’s performance prior to an incident) and cockpit voice recorders (so that investigators can hear what the communication was like in the cockpit prior to an incident).
One major challenge with cockpit voice recorders is that they only record for two hours. If you have an accident and the plane can’t fly again, then you have the last two hours of communication. Meanwhile if an incident occurs but the plane can still fly, that data will pretty quickly disappear.
Back in 2023, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) proposed extending the cockpit voice recording requirement to 25 hours. The FAA had pledged to take action on this issue following the Safety Summit in March 2023, during which more than 200 safety leaders met to discuss ways to enhance flight safety.
As it was described by former FAA Administrator Mike Whitaker, “this rule will give us substantially more data to identify the causes of incidents and help prevent them in the future.” Regulators say that there have been over a dozen incidents since 2003 where investigators would have benefited from being able to hear recordings, but couldn’t, due to the two-hour limit.
After a drawn out process, a rule has finally been issued on this, and the requirement will be implemented. This aligns regulations in the United States with regulations set by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) and European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA).
The new 25-hour cockpit voice recorder requirement applies to all newly manufactured aircraft as of 2027, and also has to be retrofitted on existing passenger aircraft by 2030.
Pilots have broadly been opposed to this change
To me this seems like a common sense change. If we agree that a cockpit voice recorder contains useful information, then isn’t it more useful to be able to hear what happened for a longer period of time? Many incidents aren’t reported immediately, or happen at the beginning of the flight, so the data never gets recovered.
For example, in 2023, when an American 777 taxied onto an active runway at JFK and caused a near disaster, the conversation in the cockpit couldn’t be recovered, since the aircraft continued its flight. Furthermore, the pilots weren’t exactly being cooperative in complying with what regulators had asked. After all, pilots are typically looking out for themselves and their careers.
This change got some pushback from unions representing pilots, specifically surrounding privacy. For example, the Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA), the largest union representing pilots, had expressed the following concerns when this was proposed:
“Current law requires the NTSB to protect the privacy of the data contained on the flight deck voice recordings, but does not prevent airlines or others from disclosing that information, and additional safeguards need to be put into place to keep them from doing so. The pilot community does have concerns about whether the information could be publicly released.”
I find this argument to be a little strange:
- Why would an airline release the transcripts of cockpit voice recorders publicly, beyond what’s vital to an investigation?
- Pilots are very well paid professionals flying aircraft worth $100+ million, with hundreds of lives in their hands, and they have specific procedures to follow; just as police officers have body cameras, it’s useful to be able to get a full picture of what happened when things do go wrong
- I see some pilots essentially arguing that aviation in the United States is so safe, and we don’t need any changes to these procedures; pilots also often argue that we need changes to crew rest rules surrounding fatigue, so should we dismiss those concerns because flying is already so safe, and there’s no need to improve?
Honestly, I think it’s pretty clear why some pilots object to this — if things do go wrong, they don’t want investigators being able to listen to what they were saying leading up to the incident. While most pilots are professionals and do a great job keeping us safe, transcripts from cockpit voice recorders often have some shocking conversations.
But understanding the mindset of what pilots were talking about and how their communication was throughout a flight can also help improve aviation safety when things do go wrong.
On a related note, we really also need cockpit video recorders, which is something that the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has been calling for, but which the pilot community has opposed. I don’t think the need for these has ever been clearer than now, following last year’s mysterious crash of Air India flight AI171, which lost all power after takeoff.
It’s widely believed that the captain intentionally cut all power to the engines moments after takeoff, while others argue it was a catastrophic failure. You know what settle this in a split second? A cockpit video recorder…
Bottom line
After talking about it for years, the FAA has finalized a rule to increase the recording period for cockpit voice recorders from two hours to 25 hours. This follows a series of incidents where being able to analyze the cockpit voice recorder would have been useful.
It’s nice to see this finally become a reality, because there’s simply no reason that investigators shouldn’t get as much information as they can when something goes wrong. I hope they also move forward with their cockpit video recorder concept, as I’d love to see anyone make a case against that in light of the AI171 incident.
What do you make of the recording period for the cockpit voice recorder being extended?
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