TechCapon

Popularly known as a flight recorder, today TechCapon will take out time to explain to you everything you should know about an aeroplane black box.



Whenever there’s a major plane crash anywhere in the world, a team of investigators go to the crash site and survey the area. The first thing they do is to look for the plane’s black box and then retrieve it. Then they contact the air traffic controller as well as gather information about the plane from the airline involved.

The aeroplane black box is the last hope for the friends and families of the victims to know exactly what caused the crash. It also helps authorities to determine the cause of the crash so as to use that information to prevent a future plane crash due to the same issue. The black box is so important that even in cases where there are no survivors, it can still give full details of what happened during the final minutes leading to the crash.

THE BLACK BOX IS ACTUALLY ORANGE IN COLOUR AND NOT BLACK



Most people I have encountered think that because it is called the “black box”, the colour must be black. That conclusion is absolutely wrong! I don’t blame them, most people have not had the opportunity to see what a black box look like. Perhaps, they are not even interested to know. However, it is surprising to know that the colour is actually orange and not black as widely speculated.

2. THE BLACK BOX IS ACTUALLY “2 BOXES” AND NOT 1 BOX.



Yeah, you heard me right. They are actually 2 orange boxes and not 1 box as most people think. These orange boxes are the flight recorders. The idea to invent the black box came up in the 1950s when the first commercial jetliner had 5 accidents in its first 2 years of service. Then the authorities didn’t know what is causing the planes to crash. They came up with the idea that it would be nice to create some sort of recorders that would record things happening in the planes before they crash. Now the technology for recording flight data have improved tremendously, they now record the data on memory chips.

3. THE BLACK BOX IS MADE OF 2 MAJOR COMPONENTS



Now that you know that the black box is actually 2 and not 1, the question will be “what are the 2 components?” Well, the first component is actually the “cockpit voice recorder”. This records every sound in the cockpit as well as the voice from the pilot’s microphones in the last two hours. In most cases, this cockpit voice recorder is enough to tell investigators what led to the crash.

For example, the case of “German Wings” airline which crashed in 2015 killing everyone on board. The cockpit voice recorder showed that it was actually the pilot who locked out his co-pilot and crashed the plane. It showed the co-pilot banging on the door and yelling “for God’s sake open the door” while passengers were screaming at the background. The second component is the “flight data recorder”. This captures more data than the cockpit voice recorder. This tells investigators everything that happened before the plane lost power.

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