Aircraft black boxes to meet new requirements due to flight MH370 incident

It has been announced that the black boxes on board aircraft are to meet new requirements as a result of the Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 incident, states an article recently published on TUjobs.com.

The European Aviation Safety Agency, EASA, has demanded that black boxes on board aircraft need to meet new requirements in order for them to be easily located, such as the ability to send signals that last three times longer, and at a frequency with a better range.

Flight data recorders and cockpit voice recorders will now be required to transmit signals under water for at least 90 days, in contrast to the current procedure of 30 days. These signals will also be made to transmit at the frequency 8.8 kHz rather than the current 37.5 kHz.

It was also stated that the old magnetic tapes should be replaced by a solid-state drive in order to increase the recording capacity from the current 2 hours to the last 20 hours of the aircraft’s operations.

In the proposed changes put forth last year, EASA paved the way for a recording capacity of 15 hours by 2019. The industry is now to be given one additional year in order to increase the memory capacity, which should take effect from 2020.

Additionally, the battery capacity of the underwater transmitter will be increased to two years from the beginning of 2018.

Patrick Ky, the CEO of EASA explained that safety can never be taken for granted, and that these expected changes will ensure as much information after an accident as possible, in order to prevent future complications.

“Given that the cause of the MH370 accident still remains unsolved, this is in our opinion the correct way to proceed,” mentions Tor O. Iversen, the Communications Director of CAA Norway. Iversen followed by stating that once these changes are put in place they will also be applicable for the regulations set out in Norway.

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Karin Lima

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TUjobs

karin.lima@tu.no