Author : Divyanshi Sar, Akash Bisoyi and Ashish Chittimilla

Any commercial aero plane or corporate jet is required to be equipped with a cockpit voice recorder and a flight data recorder. It is these two items of separate equipment which we commonly refer to as a ‘Black Box.’ While they do nothing to help the plane when it is in the air, both these pieces of equipment are vitally important should the plane crash, as they help crash investigators find out what happened just before the crash. The black box is very vital in helping piece together the causes of a plane crash. It helps in locating the cockpit voice recorder and a flight data recorder in the aftermath of a plane crash that occurs at sea, each recorder has a device fitted to it known as an Underwater Locator Beacon (ULB). The device is activated as soon as the recorder comes into contact with water and it can transmit from a depth as deep as 14,000 feet. A Black Box is not actually black at all, but bright orange. All recorders undergo countless tests. But with all that said, how helpful have these black boxes been in extracting the information regarding crashes in the recent times? Or has the time come for them to undergo some more technological advances?

Keywords: Beacon, EUROCAE, Flight data recorder, Cockpit voice recorder, Open VMS.

Article published in International Journal of Current Engineering and Technology, Vol.6, No.5 (Oct-2016)