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Essay on Flight Data Recorder
Introduction
Airplanes are equipped with cockpit voice recorders and flight data recorders to collect flight information that would help reconstruct events in case the aircraft crashes. Cockpit voice recorders, which retain a record of the most recent 30 minutes, store conversations between air traffic controllers and crew members while flight data recorders store the most recent 25 hours of aircraft operating information.
Voice and flight data recorders, which hold the clues to a plane's crash, are built strong enough to survive bomb blasts, violent impacts, and intense fire.
On September 8, 1994, USAir Flight 427, a Boeing 737-300, nose-dived 6000 feet into thick woods near Pittsburgh, killing all 132 people on board. The exact cause of the crash is not yet known, and the accident is still under investigation. The clues to reconstructing the events leading up to the plane crash, which nearly completely destroyed all of the plane's mechanical systems, lie in the so-called black boxes, which collect flight information and are designed to survive the most violent of impacts (Leppard, 1991).
Jet planes are equipped with two black boxes: the cockpit voice recorder and the flight data recorder. The cockpit voice recorder continuously collects data and retains a record of the most recent 30 minutes. Microphones mounted on the flight crew's headsets record conversations among crew members and between crew members and air traffic controllers, while an area microphone connected to overhead panels picks up ambient noise in the cockpit. "The ambient noise is sometimes useful for detecting the sounds associated with crew activities, such as lowering landing gear and positioning the flap handle," said Dennis Grossi, national resource specialist for flight data recorders at the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) in Washington, D.C....
