Well, its not an add-on to the existing black-box systems, its a replacement. These new black boxes are supposed to gather more data about more components. Gi

Well, its not an add-on to the existing black-box systems, its a replacement. These new black boxes are supposed to gather more data about more components. Given that, the $75,000 price tag makes sense. The $3-$5 per minute data cost also makes sense if you think of the black boxes as transmitting full real-time telemetry and voice recordings. However, that cost is incurred only after manual activation by the pilot or after a mechanical emergency is detected. Most of the time, the boxes will only be transmitting a "heartbeat" signal, which costs much less to transmit.