January 19, 2000, National Transportation Safety Board Chairman Jim Hall today issued the following statement following the broadcast yesterday on Dateline NBC of portions of the audio from the cockpit voice recorder of a fatal airliner accident that occurred near Cali, Colombia in 1995.
As everyone associated with the business of air safety knows, cockpit voice recorders are an invaluable tool in determining the causes of aircraft accidents and, therefore, invaluable in promoting air safety worldwide. In an effort to keep those recordings from being used for any purposes other than the advancement of air safety, Congress has placed strictures on the use of CVRs, and prohibited the government from ever releasing the audio portions of the recordings.
