Black Box– Understanding the device that helps ascertain cause of accident
Black box of the London-bound Air India flight that crashed minutes after taking off from the Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel International Airport in Ahmedabad has been recovered.
The device was recovered by the Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB) team at the rooftop of the resident doctors’ hostel building in which the ill-fated aircraft crashed, according to ground reports.
The data and recordings from the black box will help investigators understand what happened between the take-off and the crash of the ill-fated Boeing Dreamliner on Thursday.
Though it is called a black box, actually it is a bright orange-coloured device which has been designed and built to withstand extreme conditions. The colour orange makes it easier to locate it.
Every commercial aircraft comes equipped with a Flight Data Recorder (FDR) which records details on flight operation like altitude, speed, engine performance, control inputs etc and a Cockpit Voice Recorder (CVR) which records conversations between pilots, their communications with air traffic control along with other ambient sounds.
According to experts, locating the black box of this particular aircraft may not have been such a difficult task given the location of the crash and the debris. They have also been recovered from under the sea and in difficult locations.
In any case, they are built to survive crashes, high-impact, fires, and deep-sea type of circumstances. They are normally installed in the tail of the aircraft—the part where they are least likely to be damaged in the case of an accident.
By analysing their data and recordings, investigators will be able to reconstruct the final moments of the aircraft and prevent such mishaps in future. There can be many causes for a crash like technical/ mechanical, design, human error (pilot or ATC), weather conditions, which need to be fixed for future flight safety. In the past the back box data has been a great help to determine the cause of the accident which further led to changes in aviation regulations, training procedures and improving aircraft design.
