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08.01.2024 - 14:54 / forbes.com / Jennifer Homendy
The cockpit voice recorder for Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 was overwritten, hampering investigators aiming to determine why a door plug for an exit door on the Boeing 737 Max 9 jetliner blew out shortly after the flight took off from Portland on Friday night.
“There is nothing on the cockpit voice recorder,” Jennifer Homendy, chair of the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), told reporters at a Sunday news conference following the first full day of investigation, adding that “since 2018, we’ve had we’ve done 10 investigations where the CVR was overwritten.”
When investigating any incident, the NTSB wants to listen to the audio from the cockpit to try to glean clues from verbal communication or sounds, such as mechanical noises or alarms that might be overheard. But too often that audio is not preserved for investigators, making it much harder to get to the bottom of what happened.
Homendy described the overwritten recording on Alaska Airlines flight 1282 as “a loss for FAA and a loss for safety, because that information is key, not just for our investigation, but for improving aviation safety.”
As the independent U.S. government investigative agency responsible for civil transportation accident investigations, the NTSB has called for the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to increase black-box recording time to 25 hours, which is the norm in Europe and in many other countries.
Currently, the FAA requires black-box recordings to be kept for only two hours. Historically, the agency has pushed back on retaining black-box recordings for longer time periods, often citing costs as a reason not to make the change.
The NTSB has strongly recommended a 25-hour CVR since 2018, following an incident at San Francisco International Airport where an Air Canada plane came within 60 feet of four aircraft waiting to take off. “On that taxiway were four airplanes with a combined total of about 1,000 people,” Homendy said, adding that the 2018 investigation was made more difficult because the plane’s CVR had been erased.
Five years later, the NTSB chair again pushed for a 25-hour recording time at an FAA safety summit in March 2023, following a string of near-collisions on runways had one thing in common: In every instance, the CVR had been overwritten.
On Sunday, Homendy said that since the Alaska Airlines flight crew did not pull the circuit breaker for the CVR, the recording was overwritten at the two-hour mark, leaving investigators on the scene unable to use the data.
Progress on this issue has been both too slow and too weak, according to Homendy. “The FAA, thankfully, has taken some recent action to issue a notice of proposed rulemaking to extend CVR time from two hours to 25 hours, but only on newly
Good morning from Skift. It’s Friday, January 26. Here’s what you need to know about the business of travel today.
Alaska Airlines said Thursday the Boeing 737 Max 9 grounding will cost it $150 million and that the airline would hold Boeing accountable.
Alaska Airlines’ CEO said he was “angry” at Boeing after a door panel on a 737 Max 9 blew out mid-air.
The Boeing 737 Max 9 saga has impacted more than 1,500 Alaska Airlines flights as the carrier said there will be cancelations through Friday.
Alaska Airlines has begun preliminary inspections on some of its Boeing 737-9 Max aircrafts this weekend, adding that up to 20 planes could undergo inspection, the company said on Saturday.
Alaska Airlines said it will extend its cancellation of Boeing 737 Max 9 flights through Tuesday, Jan. 16, for planes that have been grounded since last week’s mid-air cabin panel blowout.
It's not unusual for passengers to fall asleep on flights, but what happened next for Cuong Tran was decidedly out of the ordinary.
An Alaska Airlines flight departing Portland International Airport (PDX) on Friday night experienced a sudden cabin decompression as a fitting on its fuselage shot away from the plane, leaving a gaping hole in the airplane as frightened passengers scrambled to put on emergency oxygen masks.
Alaska Airlines will cancel up to 150 flights per day through Saturday on its maligned Boeing 737-9 MAX aircraft.
Officials investigating why a panel on a Boeing 737 Max 9 blew open during an Alaska Airlines flight last week say they are struggling to piece together exactly what happened because the plane’s cockpit voice recorder overwrote itself before it could be retrieved.
Alaska Airlines said it is canceling all flights operated on the Boeing 737 Max 9 through January 13 as it awaits approval from the Federal Aviation Administration to conduct inspections on the aircraft.
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