That’s surprising that the black box overwrites itself after 2 hours of recording. This article linked to an article I missed about how the plane that had the door/panel fall off had the cockpit audio overwritten because it wasn’t collected in time.
The black box isn’t like a modern hard drive, with terabytes of storage. They’re often old, and even the modern ones need to put so much effort into protection against things like fire, seawater and collisions that they don’t have as much space as you might imagine.
They have to rely on someone going out of their way to take the box out, or shut down the plane, because the alternative would be for them to have some way to decide for themselves to stop recording. If they could do that then a false positive would cause them to miss potentially important data, so they’re designed to keep going until someone makes it stop
That sounds like something they need to improve on then. Two hours is a ridiculously short amount of time given the tech we have in 2024.
It’s not like we don’t have the technology
As of 2008 it is an FAA requirement that the recording duration is a minimum of two hours.
Just designed to (minimum) spec.
In industry, minimum means that’s what you’re getting
It’s like seeing something labeled military grade.
Regulations. Everything requires so much time/effort to certify and cost. Even as technology has moved forward, they have to recoup their investment in certifying the equipment.
I guarantee that if the regulations didn’t state a minimum of 2 hours or the need for black boxes, aircraft manufacturer would put a 1 minute tape recorder inside a foam box. If they even put in anything.
So the old tech is somehow better and smaller than a modern SSD?
Doubt
I didn’t say anything like that. The black box is physically much bigger than a modern SSD, but stores far less data because of all the extra problems it has to deal with
So what problems would a modern SSD not be better at?
Being hit by a truck, then catching fire and being allowed to burn while doused in jet fuel for a while before being dunked in seawater for a few days.
I’ll bet you can’t find an SSD which can do that.
The flight recorder itself doesn’t do that either. Just the case surrounding it. You could just as well put an SSD in it. Hell it would probably be better as older tech was more vulnerable to vibrations.
Which is why it’s in the protective box?
Of-the-shelf SSDs are optimized for speed and price.
Flight recorders are typically specified to withstand an impact of 3400 g and temperatures of over 1,000 °C (1,830 °F), exposure to salt water, and high pressure if it sinks to the bottom of the sea as required by EUROCAE ED-112.
Maybe you could design a flight recorder that uses SSDs, but then you must get it certified again for the new hardware, which will cost a lot of money nobody wants to spend. The next step in flight recorders is to also send a live feed of telemetric data back to some ground station so the last position of the plane is known - with a flight recorder you only get this data after you found the wreck. Currently submitting this signal is optional and can be turned of by the pilot, which is the reason why Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 is still missing.
Maybe you could design a flight recorder that uses SSDs,
Maybe? Really?
which will cost a lot of money nobody wants to spend.
I think this is probably more of the answer. Capitalism 101.
Black box were Solid State Drive before SSD were common, the advantages of no moving parts are simply too high.
Then it should be easy to add in a larger capacity modern drive?
Yes, in the EU the minimum recording time was recently increased to 25h. It is not a tech limitation anymore. What is actually limiting are privacy concerns from misuse of the longer recording.
This is why we can’t have nice things.
“I don’t understand the problem, therefore it must be simple and anyone not saying it’s simple is obviously wrong”
There’s a proposal by the FAA (here) to increase the length to 25h for new planes.
There have been catastrophic events that took longer than 2h by themselves to manifest, so they lost the beginning of the disaster by this stupidly short record duration.
I’m due to hop on to a 787 later this year. I don’t really know how much of a risk I’m taking. This stuff’s freaking me out. Are they all sus? Or just on certain airlines or what?
The 787 airframe is unrelated to the 737 MAX series, which had the MCAS crashes/door falling off.
That said, I’d never want to fly Boeing, but it’s probably not a realistic worry at this point.
The 787 has had its share of problems too. Boeing really need to get their act together.
Yeah. The max series seems to be the ones with all the problems, especially the max 8 and newer. If it’s not one of those, you should be fine.
There are a lot of Boeing 787 in the air at any time. You can go to flightradar24.com, click the filter icon at the bottom, add new filter, then aircraft and as ICAO code you just enter
B78*and it will show you only this aircraft type.The risk for an incident with any 787 at any time in the next few years may be higher that it should be. But the risk for one individual plane on one single flight is absolutely negligible. You’re more in danger on your way to the airport probably.
I can only see three incidents with 787 on wikipedia:
- 2013 Boeing 787 Dreamliner grounding
- 2024 TCAS incident over Somalia
- LATAM Airlines Flight 800
This does not looks like a repeating pattern. The Flight 800 was a 300ft drop midair with around 30 to 40 people hitting the ceiling of the cabin and landing in Auckland without further problems. This does not sound 787 related. Just keep your seatbelts on.
The 2024 TCAS incident reads like a near collision based on miscommunication by air traffic control. Not related to the 787 series.
And well the 2013 787 grounding was based on lithium-ion batteries problems and has now been fixed (?).
I would say relax and keep your seatbelts buckled (disregarding what airframe you are on).
They hit the ceiling and landed in aukland? Damn thats one help of a bump.
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50 people were injured including crew
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10 were sent to hospital
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1 is in a serious condition.
True, as it says in the wikipedia I linked. But is has nothing do to with the 787. This could happen to any plane and in fact does happen on many planes in the past and future. A drop because of airpocket and turbulence are very common.
It’s the failure to detect and warn people to belt in advance which is the unusual part, and that’s what caused most of the injuries.
Is this even detectable ahead of time? The crew has always said to remain buckled while seated from what I remember, even if the seatbelt light is off.
I’m a New Zealander so been on a lot of longhaul. Normally you have seatbelts on whenever you’re not roaming around.
However, when there’s real turbulence the light goes on and the pilot announces return to your seats and stow away tray tables (if no meals are out). Cabin crew then strap themselves in.
You cant always detect turbulence before you run into it
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I won’t attempt to assuage your concern with facts, as this is not my area of expertise, but numbers alone are in your favor. Millions to one, at least. “You don’t worry about hitting the lottery,” is what I try to tell myself. Let us know how it turns out. I wish you good fortune!
I’m about to do that in 30 minutes.
No, seriously. Not trying to one up you. It’s for work. Otherwise, I would have picked a different flight because I’m paranoid even though I recognize they still have numerous flights daily without issue.
How’d it go?
Pretty well! Came into Denver. Bumpy arrival. No issues. Many flights just like this one are successfully completed every day. Nevertheless, I am concerned.
Now if I could do something about the altitude sickness that I’m going to be facing soon.
Cheers loyal lemmy canary.
Don’t worry about it.
Do you ride in a car? You’re way more likely to get injured in a car than a plane. I’m not saying it doesn’t happen, but these are incredibly rare occurrences. And luckily the airline regulators are super good about preventing previous issues from every happening again.
And I’m sure you won’t be able to shut it out of your mind, but it’s not worth worrying about for even a minute.
They are all sus. Boeing is untrustworthy and has proven so many times in the last few years. Find a different plane imo.
