Long-haul Airbus planes to be fitted with ejectable black boxes

[NewWorldRecord]

Long-haul Airbus planes to be fitted with ejectable black boxes

Airbus planes will be fitted with ejectable technology so devices can be found faster

PUBLISHED : Wednesday, 14 January, 2015, 1:31am
UPDATED : Wednesday, 14 January, 2015, 3:30am

Agence France-Presse in Paris

The Cockpit Voice Recorder of the AirAsia flight QZ8501 after its recovery from the sea floor. Photo: EPA

Long-haul Airbus A350 and A380 passengers jets will soon come equipped with ejectable black boxes that can float, making them easier to find in an air crash at sea, aviation sources said.

"At the end of last year Airbus got the green light from EASA (European Air Security Agency) to work on the necessary modifications to its planes in order to install these new black boxes in the rear of the planes," one of the sources said.

An EASA spokesman confirmed the agency was working on changing the necessary certification to allow Airbus to equip its planes with the new flight data and cockpit voice recorders. The technology, which has already been approved for military aircraft, has not been used in civil aviation because - up until a few years ago - air accidents mainly happened during take-off or landing. Black boxes are generally found easily on land.

But in recent years passenger jets have crashed into the ocean, raising the need for new technology to help find the black boxes.

These recorders are critical in air crash investigations as they provide information on plane operations and pilot conversations. Investigators say they help explain 90 per cent of crashes.

In 2009, an Air France jet travelling from Rio to Paris went down in the Atlantic with 228 people on board and the search for the black boxes at the bottom of the ocean took almost two years. Last March, a Malaysia Airlines plane disappeared over the Indian Ocean and its black boxes have still not been found.

Last month, an AirAsia plane crashed into the Java Sea and divers only yesterday recovered the cockpit recorder - a day after fnding the flight data recorder.

"The idea is to modify the black boxes so that each one records the flight details and [cockpit] conversations. One would be ejectable, the other not," a source close to Airbus said.

An ejectable black box would be equipped with an airbag so it could float on the water in the event of a crash at sea. It would also help to indicate the exact point of impact at the time of the crash and find the wreckage.

The Toulouse-based aircraft maker plans to install the ejectable black boxes on its long-haul A350 and A380 jets first since they are used in flights over oceans.

The International Civil Aviation Organisation is set to vote next month on a recommendation of one its working groups to equip commercial airliners with the technology.

Airliners already send data via satellite regarding flight performance to improve maintenance on the ground, so the changes are not hard to implement.