Spurred by recent difficult, time-consuming and costly searches for flight recorders after airplane crashes in remote areas without radar coverage, the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) is pressing for alternative methods of locating aircraft wreckage and recovering critical flight data.
In a safety recommendation letter to Michael Huerta, administrator of the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the NSTB outlined eight recommendations, all aimed at ensuring that accident investigators have timely access to cockpit voice recorder (CVR) and flight data recorder (FDR) data.
Those data are “some of the most important information sources available to help determine causes of aviation accidents,” the NTSB said in the letter, dated Jan. 22. “As such, recovering the recorders is an investigative priority at the crash site.”
The NTSB’s action came shortly before the International Civil Aviation Organization’s (ICAO’s) High Level Safety Conference agreed i…
