I was glancing through the safety recommendations from an investigation into a 2013 fatal helicopter crash in the North Sea when one point in particular jumped out at me.
It read, “It is recommended that the European Aviation Safety Agency introduces a requirement for the installation of cockpit image recorders, in aircraft required to be equipped with flight data and cockpit Voice recorders, to capture flight crew actions within the cockpit environment.”
In other words, dash cams for cockpits, but aimed internally. The next point recommends similar recorders for the cabins of aircraft.
I’m a big fan of Discovery Channel’s Mayday, a Canadian production documenting investigations into air crashes the world over. Often they interview the actual investigators, as well as survivors, if there are any. It’s fascinating stuff, and television at its finest. (This is what Discovery Channel should be full of, not reality TV, but that’s another column.)
The key thing in any crash is finding the so-called black boxes, which are actually orange with reflective tape. The cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder are instrumental in determining what actually happened. Why this is so important is that it allows regulators and the industry to learn from fatal mistakes. The flight safety manual, as they say, is written in blood.
Miniaturization of storage media has dramatically democratized similar devices known as dash cams. These cameras, usually mounted on the dashboard of a vehicle, record continuously. Their purpose is to catch that fleeting instance of something really bad happening, and hopefully, showing the driver of the vehicle this is mounted on, did nothing wrong. I see they now carry them at the local Staples. Apparently they are a big thing in Russia, where insurance claims can be problematic.
The dash cams record in a continuous loop, include GPS telemetry indicating speed, direction, etc., and even have a sensor to indicate bumps or collisions.
Just as dashboards eventually swallowed once-ubiquitous dashboard GPS navigation systems, I expect in the next few years dash cams will be fully integrated into production vehicles, starting with high-end models. Since some cars already have cameras built in for automated parking, full 360 footage would be simple.
So, the question now becomes, how do you integrate this into aircraft?
When you talk to people who actually run aviation businesses, you quickly learn there’s no such thing as just slapping in a new instrument and attaching it to the aircraft. There’s tremendous certification processes, and for a new black box, it would be much more strenuous. Would the copious amount of data captured by numerous video cameras (especially if recording the cabin of an airliner) require a third black box? Could it be stored in the flight data recorder?
Tens of thousands of existing aircraft would require pricey updates, including the installation of cameras, microphones, wiring for the above, and possibly the third black box, the video data recorder. Maybe it could be greatly simplified by using wireless transfer technology, like your Wi-Fi video cameras in the house. Then again, we are told to shut down transmitting electronic devices in flight, presumably for a reason.
