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New "black box" recorders would have to meet stricter reliability requirements and hold more information critical to helping accident investigators solve crashes, under a proposal by the Federal Aviation Administration (news - web sites).
The proposal, announced Thursday, follows years of recommendations by the National Transportation Safety Board (news - web sites) (NTSB (news - web sites)). It would require that cockpit recorders be impervious to power failures and that the devices have two hours of recording time instead of the 30 minutes they have now.
Other improvements include flight data recorders that collect more details about how cockpit controls were used during flight, and requiring recorders to store sound and data on computer chips instead of magnetic tape. The chips are far more able to withstand a crash.
"Good data is often the Rosetta stone to deciphering what went wrong in an aircraft incident or accident," FAA (news - web sites) Administrator Marion Blakey said.
The new proposal does not address the controversial issue of video recorders in the cockpit. The NTSB hopes to put video recorders on planes, but pilots oppose the idea. Blakey said the agency is still considering the video recorder issue.
Crash-proof recorders, first required at the dawn of the jet age in the 1950s, have been one of the most important tools investigators use to understand accidents. But poorly functioning or inadequate recorders have hindered several major accident investigations in recent years, including the USAir jet that crashed near Pittsburgh in 1994 and the American Airlines jet that plunged to the ground in Queens, N.Y., in 2001.
The latest proposal would not become law until it received final government approval. It appears to face little opposition but would not go into effect until late next year.
The proposal, announced Thursday, follows years of recommendations by the National Transportation Safety Board (news - web sites) (NTSB (news - web sites)). It would require that cockpit recorders be impervious to power failures and that the devices have two hours of recording time instead of the 30 minutes they have now.
Other improvements include flight data recorders that collect more details about how cockpit controls were used during flight, and requiring recorders to store sound and data on computer chips instead of magnetic tape. The chips are far more able to withstand a crash.
"Good data is often the Rosetta stone to deciphering what went wrong in an aircraft incident or accident," FAA (news - web sites) Administrator Marion Blakey said.
The new proposal does not address the controversial issue of video recorders in the cockpit. The NTSB hopes to put video recorders on planes, but pilots oppose the idea. Blakey said the agency is still considering the video recorder issue.
Crash-proof recorders, first required at the dawn of the jet age in the 1950s, have been one of the most important tools investigators use to understand accidents. But poorly functioning or inadequate recorders have hindered several major accident investigations in recent years, including the USAir jet that crashed near Pittsburgh in 1994 and the American Airlines jet that plunged to the ground in Queens, N.Y., in 2001.
The latest proposal would not become law until it received final government approval. It appears to face little opposition but would not go into effect until late next year.
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