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January 25, 2015 - The National Transportation
Safety Board on Thursday issued a series of
safety recommendations to the Federal Aviation
Administration calling for improvements in
locating downed aircraft and ways to obtain
critical flight data faster and without the need
for immediate underwater retrieval. The Board
also re-emphasized the need for cockpit image
recorders on commercial airplanes.
Recent accidents have pointed to the need for
improved technologies to locate aircraft
wreckage and flight recorders lost in remote
locations or over water. In the 2009 crash of
Air France Flight 447, it took almost two
years and $40 million to find the recorders.
Investigators are still searching for Malaysian
Airlines
Flight 370. So far the search has involved
26 countries using 84 vessels and numerous
aircraft.
“Technology has reached a point where we
shouldn’t have to search hundreds of miles of
ocean floor in a frantic race to find these
valuable boxes,’’ said NTSB Acting Chairman
Christopher A. Hart. “In this day and age, lost
aircraft should be a thing of the past.”
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