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The CVR only recording two hours is absolutely inexcusable. Why does my iPhone - $850 retail - have capabilities that far surpass those of a $250 million modern

The CVR only recording two hours is absolutely inexcusable. Why does my iPhone - $850 retail - have capabilities that far surpass those of a $250 million modern passenger jet? Hopefully after this incident, public outrage over these ridiculous technological shortcomings will be the catalyst for legislation. Throwing in some extra satellite transmission, GPS, and voice recording capabilities that will hold up even in the event of an electrical issue or fire, and that cannot be disabled by bad actors, just cannot be this difficult. In my view, the moment this plane went off course, or a fire alarm went off or any other irregularity occurred, a Malaysian Airlines control center should have been alerted and been able to bring up video of the cockpit, maybe the passenger cabin as well, and been able to remotely view diagnostic and positioning data. All of this could easily and cheaply occur via a satellite internet connection. Edit: For the record, I am not suggesting that plugging a commercial iPhone into a cockpit would work - I'm comparing the capabilities of consumer technology to cockpit technology, which seems woefully inadequate to me.

learc83 13y ago
>Why does my iPhone - $850 retail - have capabilities that far surpass those of a $250 million modern passenger jet? Because your iPhone isn't designed to survive a plane crash. The requirements for both design and certification are so different that comparisons to consumer electronics (especially regarding price) are meaningless.
- downandout 13y ago
  So the thought that it might be possible to install some more memory on the CVR is completely outrageous?
- kenrikm 13y ago
  While correct. I for one don't see a reason they could not supplement the highly fault tolerant Cockpit Voice Recorder with a backup system that can record longer periods of time. worst case you only get the two hours.
  - jlawer 13y ago
    The airlines can, but they don't because if its not mandated they aren't likely to do it unless it is advantageous for them. There is an additional data recorder that operates like this the "Quick Data Recorder" designed to be able to be removed and read regularly by the ground crew to better diagnose and fix the plane. Unfortunately the voice recorders are really only used when the plane crashes, so the airlines aren't going to pay to put them in. Add to this the fact that anything being hooked into critical plane systems (and a lot of them are considered critical) needs to go through hundreds of hours of testing means your not talking a cheap option.
grej 13y ago
Not sure why you're getting downvoted for this comment, but I agree with what you're trying to say regarding storage. Granted, of course there are some survivability and hardening considerations to take into account for this application vs. your iphone, but at it's core we're talking something not too dissimilar in concept. For reference, this is the link to one of these products: http://www.uasc.com/products/cvfdr.aspx http://www.uasc.com/products/cvfdr.aspx It clearly states that the data for modern CVRs are held in flash storage. For something that costs thousands of dollars, and is absolutely critical to after action flight accident discovery, there's no excuse not to capture the voice data from every flight in full given the current prices of flash storage.
- downandout 13y ago
  Not sure why you're getting downvoted for this comment Probably because I said I had an iPhone :). Either that or the people downvoting it thought I was suggesting that we plug an iPhone into the cockpit and all will be well. I was simply saying that many of these problems have been solved for use in far less important applications, so it should not be that big of a stretch to get them into commercial aircraft. The suggestion that it might be possible in 2014 to install additional memory into a CVR is apparently such a technological leap that it is worth 5 downvotes :). I cannot wait for the day when it might not sound so crazy.
  - NamTaf 13y ago
    No, it's because you're not considering properly the problem at hand. You're comparing apples and oranges by comparing consumer hardware capabilities and the capabilities able to be achieved for a hardened service environment solution. It's the same reason why we don't just go and install a new quad core x86 on rockets for their guidance.
    - downandout 13y ago
      So you are saying that there is a hard technological limit of 2 hours on a CVR because it must be in a hardened container. Got it.
chaz 13y ago
I think it's worth having the discussion of having a permanent locator on aircraft that can't be disabled, remotely-triggered hot mikes, and longer CVRs. But I downvoted you for falling into the "if we can send a man to the moon, why can't we ____" argument trap, which is more or less the straw man. > just cannot be this difficult ... easily and cheaply Ever get a feature request from someone who, in a single sentence, describes months or quarters of development time and introduces all kinds of risks and dependencies, but thinks it can be done by next Tuesday?
- downandout 13y ago
  Ever get a feature request from someone who, in a single sentence, describes months or quarters of development time and introduces all kinds of risks and dependencies, but thinks it can be done by next Tuesday? I have, but I don't think that's relevant here. This isn't a "next Tuesday" issue. Planes have been flying over oceans for decades, and these issues have been contemplated and examined by allegedly bright people for at least that long. Yet, somehow, here we are in 2014 searching for a jet with 230 people aboard and are clueless as to where it is or how it "vanished". I can assure you that whatever happened, it didn't vanish, and that those people likely suffered horrible, violent deaths. It is frustrating that we wouldn't apply modern technology to learn about and potentially prevent such tragedies. Even if seeing what happened in real-time couldn't have stopped this incident, knowing what happened could prevent similar incidents in the future.
davidmr 13y ago
Legislation is what set the CVRs at two hours in the first place. §121.359(i)(1) [1] sets the minimum. It should hardly be surprising that these manufacturers don't exceed it. My strong suspicion is that there's a design that meets the requirements and people aren't putting money into developing better ones until more regulation requires it. Obviously I know nothing about international law, but given how closely developed nations seem to coordinate commercial air travel regulation, I would suspect that changing this would take forever. [1]http://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/14/121.359 http://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/14/121.359
- grej 13y ago
  You're right of course on this being a legislatively driven requirement. This presents an interesting case study on how the sclerotic nature of a legislative (or bureaucratic) process sometimes restricts adoption of beneficial technology.
  - marshray 13y ago
    "Floors become ceilings" as they say.
  - davidmr 13y ago
    That's certainly true, but you could also make a strong case that flight recorders aren't necessarily a place where you're going to have a race to put as much technology in them as possible. I doubt we'll see a YC startup for this any time soon. I could make the most awesome flight recorder ever seen, but nobody will buy it (speaking of which, who actually buys these? The airline like they do with engines or the manufacturer like they do with, say, the batteries?). They're going to keep buying the Honeywell or the Teledyne one because that's just who they buy recorders from. I can't even fathom what would be the cost to enter this market. The engineering and testing and certification costs must be immense. Even if you do this, I don't think you'd be able to charge a premium for a better product. Imagine yourself as the Boeing 797 project manager: you're hundreds of millions over budget, the shareholders are getting upset, etc. Now your data recorder engineer comes up to you and says "here's a list of data recorders that meet federal and international standards, sorted by price." Which end of the list do you start from?
objclxt 13y ago
I'll bite. > Why does my iPhone - $850 retail - have capabilities that far surpass those of a $250 million modern passenger jet? It is not unheard of, or unknown, for iPhones to crash, have unrecoverable data loss, or suffer from hardware issues like defective flash. A CVR needs to work all the time, without fail. People will excuse their iPhone crashing out from time to time. This is inexcusable on a CVR. You're talking about planes that run flight computers with three different CPUs and instruction sets to prevent bugs in the underlying silicon from manifesting. > fire alarm went off or any other irregularity occurred, a Malaysian Airlines control center should have been alerted and been able to bring up video of the cockpit Even without the technical constraints it's simply not worth it. Why would a control centre need live video of the cockpit in the case of a fire alarm going off? If there's a fire the crew are not phoning home. Communication with people outside the plane is a low priority. The 'Malaysian Airlines control center' is not going to be getting in touch with the pilots. That's not how it works. > Hopefully after this incident, public outrage over these ridiculous technological shortcomings will be the catalyst for legislation I have worked on hardware that goes into commercial jets. These rules may seem silly to outside observers, but those observers frequently don't realise exactly how harsh the environment is, and the constraints you're dealing with. What they are not are 'ridiculous technological shortcomings'. Commercial airline safety is already one of the most highly regulated forms of travel out there. We don't use 'domestic' components for the same reason they don't use them for satellites: failure is not an option. The 'live video feeds' and 'constant satellite links' people keep bringing up are only of use in relatively minor emergencies. They serve no purpose during things like catastrophic mechanical failure, because you've already lost the satellite link at that point. The plane is going to go down. We will find the plane. We will find the CVR.
- downandout 13y ago
  Again, I didn't suggest that plugging an iPhone in is the answer. It was a comparison to the capabilities of consumer electronics vs. those in cockpits of supposedly advanced aircraft. We can, and we should, install more memory into CVR's if they can only record two hours of an international flight. In your example of a catastrophic mechanical failure, a battery powered satellite link wouldn't necessarily lose touch until impact. At the very least, the plane's position would be known and rescuers dispatched. Critical evidence in this incident is likely long gone because of the time that has passed - even if we find it today. Video feeds etc. would at the very least assist in preventing future tragedies and help us understand exactly what happened. We would know, for example, the specific tactics of hijackers (if that was indeed the case) or that the pilot just went nuts, or if there was a mechanical or fire risk issue that must be addressed on other planes. We would know answers to questions we would likely never otherwise be able to answer.

learc83 13y ago

>Why does my iPhone - $850 retail - have capabilities that far surpass those of a $250 million modern passenger jet? Because your iPhone isn't designed to survive a plane crash. The requirements for both design and certification are so different that comparisons to consumer electronics (especially regarding price) are meaningless.

downandout 13y ago
So the thought that it might be possible to install some more memory on the CVR is completely outrageous?
kenrikm 13y ago
While correct. I for one don't see a reason they could not supplement the highly fault tolerant Cockpit Voice Recorder with a backup system that can record longer periods of time. worst case you only get the two hours.
- jlawer 13y ago
  The airlines can, but they don't because if its not mandated they aren't likely to do it unless it is advantageous for them. There is an additional data recorder that operates like this the "Quick Data Recorder" designed to be able to be removed and read regularly by the ground crew to better diagnose and fix the plane. Unfortunately the voice recorders are really only used when the plane crashes, so the airlines aren't going to pay to put them in. Add to this the fact that anything being hooked into critical plane systems (and a lot of them are considered critical) needs to go through hundreds of hours of testing means your not talking a cheap option.

grej 13y ago

Not sure why you're getting downvoted for this comment, but I agree with what you're trying to say regarding storage. Granted, of course there are some survivability and hardening considerations to take into account for this application vs. your iphone, but at it's core we're talking something not too dissimilar in concept. For reference, this is the link to one of these products: http://www.uasc.com/products/cvfdr.aspx http://www.uasc.com/products/cvfdr.aspx It clearly states that the data for modern CVRs are held in flash storage. For something that costs thousands of dollars, and is absolutely critical to after action flight accident discovery, there's no excuse not to capture the voice data from every flight in full given the current prices of flash storage.

downandout 13y ago
Not sure why you're getting downvoted for this comment Probably because I said I had an iPhone :). Either that or the people downvoting it thought I was suggesting that we plug an iPhone into the cockpit and all will be well. I was simply saying that many of these problems have been solved for use in far less important applications, so it should not be that big of a stretch to get them into commercial aircraft. The suggestion that it might be possible in 2014 to install additional memory into a CVR is apparently such a technological leap that it is worth 5 downvotes :). I cannot wait for the day when it might not sound so crazy.
- NamTaf 13y ago
  No, it's because you're not considering properly the problem at hand. You're comparing apples and oranges by comparing consumer hardware capabilities and the capabilities able to be achieved for a hardened service environment solution. It's the same reason why we don't just go and install a new quad core x86 on rockets for their guidance.
  - downandout 13y ago
    So you are saying that there is a hard technological limit of 2 hours on a CVR because it must be in a hardened container. Got it.

chaz 13y ago

I think it's worth having the discussion of having a permanent locator on aircraft that can't be disabled, remotely-triggered hot mikes, and longer CVRs. But I downvoted you for falling into the "if we can send a man to the moon, why can't we ____" argument trap, which is more or less the straw man. > just cannot be this difficult ... easily and cheaply Ever get a feature request from someone who, in a single sentence, describes months or quarters of development time and introduces all kinds of risks and dependencies, but thinks it can be done by next Tuesday?

downandout 13y ago
Ever get a feature request from someone who, in a single sentence, describes months or quarters of development time and introduces all kinds of risks and dependencies, but thinks it can be done by next Tuesday? I have, but I don't think that's relevant here. This isn't a "next Tuesday" issue. Planes have been flying over oceans for decades, and these issues have been contemplated and examined by allegedly bright people for at least that long. Yet, somehow, here we are in 2014 searching for a jet with 230 people aboard and are clueless as to where it is or how it "vanished". I can assure you that whatever happened, it didn't vanish, and that those people likely suffered horrible, violent deaths. It is frustrating that we wouldn't apply modern technology to learn about and potentially prevent such tragedies. Even if seeing what happened in real-time couldn't have stopped this incident, knowing what happened could prevent similar incidents in the future.

davidmr 13y ago

Legislation is what set the CVRs at two hours in the first place. §121.359(i)(1) [1] sets the minimum. It should hardly be surprising that these manufacturers don't exceed it. My strong suspicion is that there's a design that meets the requirements and people aren't putting money into developing better ones until more regulation requires it. Obviously I know nothing about international law, but given how closely developed nations seem to coordinate commercial air travel regulation, I would suspect that changing this would take forever. [1]http://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/14/121.359 http://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/14/121.359

grej 13y ago
You're right of course on this being a legislatively driven requirement. This presents an interesting case study on how the sclerotic nature of a legislative (or bureaucratic) process sometimes restricts adoption of beneficial technology.
- marshray 13y ago
  "Floors become ceilings" as they say.
- davidmr 13y ago
  That's certainly true, but you could also make a strong case that flight recorders aren't necessarily a place where you're going to have a race to put as much technology in them as possible. I doubt we'll see a YC startup for this any time soon. I could make the most awesome flight recorder ever seen, but nobody will buy it (speaking of which, who actually buys these? The airline like they do with engines or the manufacturer like they do with, say, the batteries?). They're going to keep buying the Honeywell or the Teledyne one because that's just who they buy recorders from. I can't even fathom what would be the cost to enter this market. The engineering and testing and certification costs must be immense. Even if you do this, I don't think you'd be able to charge a premium for a better product. Imagine yourself as the Boeing 797 project manager: you're hundreds of millions over budget, the shareholders are getting upset, etc. Now your data recorder engineer comes up to you and says "here's a list of data recorders that meet federal and international standards, sorted by price." Which end of the list do you start from?

objclxt 13y ago

I'll bite. > Why does my iPhone - $850 retail - have capabilities that far surpass those of a $250 million modern passenger jet? It is not unheard of, or unknown, for iPhones to crash, have unrecoverable data loss, or suffer from hardware issues like defective flash. A CVR needs to work all the time, without fail. People will excuse their iPhone crashing out from time to time. This is inexcusable on a CVR. You're talking about planes that run flight computers with three different CPUs and instruction sets to prevent bugs in the underlying silicon from manifesting. > fire alarm went off or any other irregularity occurred, a Malaysian Airlines control center should have been alerted and been able to bring up video of the cockpit Even without the technical constraints it's simply not worth it. Why would a control centre need live video of the cockpit in the case of a fire alarm going off? If there's a fire the crew are not phoning home. Communication with people outside the plane is a low priority. The 'Malaysian Airlines control center' is not going to be getting in touch with the pilots. That's not how it works. > Hopefully after this incident, public outrage over these ridiculous technological shortcomings will be the catalyst for legislation I have worked on hardware that goes into commercial jets. These rules may seem silly to outside observers, but those observers frequently don't realise exactly how harsh the environment is, and the constraints you're dealing with. What they are not are 'ridiculous technological shortcomings'. Commercial airline safety is already one of the most highly regulated forms of travel out there. We don't use 'domestic' components for the same reason they don't use them for satellites: failure is not an option. The 'live video feeds' and 'constant satellite links' people keep bringing up are only of use in relatively minor emergencies. They serve no purpose during things like catastrophic mechanical failure, because you've already lost the satellite link at that point. The plane is going to go down. We will find the plane. We will find the CVR.

downandout 13y ago
Again, I didn't suggest that plugging an iPhone in is the answer. It was a comparison to the capabilities of consumer electronics vs. those in cockpits of supposedly advanced aircraft. We can, and we should, install more memory into CVR's if they can only record two hours of an international flight. In your example of a catastrophic mechanical failure, a battery powered satellite link wouldn't necessarily lose touch until impact. At the very least, the plane's position would be known and rescuers dispatched. Critical evidence in this incident is likely long gone because of the time that has passed - even if we find it today. Video feeds etc. would at the very least assist in preventing future tragedies and help us understand exactly what happened. We would know, for example, the specific tactics of hijackers (if that was indeed the case) or that the pilot just went nuts, or if there was a mechanical or fire risk issue that must be addressed on other planes. We would know answers to questions we would likely never otherwise be able to answer.