Is it time to save money by abolishing the use of black boxes in commercial passenger airplanes?

[Boojatta]

You might say that black boxes are helpful for crash investigations. However, why bother to investigate airplane crashes? We already know that people make errors. Why does it matter what kind of error it is: design, maintenance, piloting, or whatever? Ultimately, it comes down to human error and nothing can be done about that. To err is human, as they say.

Now, perhaps there are people who need a hobby. They have time on their hands and want to spend it investigating airplane crashes. We can empathize with them. However, is their need for a hobby enough to justify maintaining the practice of using black boxes?

[Idealism]

1. Saving money?

How much money do you think we could really save by eliminating one of the only tools we have to codify what happened after a disaster?

[Mind_your_head]

2. No

That's just a stupid suggestion.

Toss down another Jack Daniels..... :eyes:

[lostnotforgotten]

3. Are You .... - Black Boxes Are Invaluable

eom

[cali]

4. Are you insane?

If it's a design error, it can be corrected. If it's maitenance than that should be known by the general public.

Totally stupid post.

[lapfog_1]

5. Black boxes are so cheap these days

that there are plans to start including them with new cars.

They have saved likely thousands of lives by finding design flaws or operational, training, and maintenance flaws with the airlines and some private aircraft.

[Unrepentant Fenian]

7. You're kidding, right????

[lapfog_1]

10. About what?

That they have saved thousands of lives or that they are so cheap that the auto industry is considering adding a version of them to vehicles?

Link to cars that already have EDRs (event data recorders)...

http://www.privacydigest.com/2007/11/26/cars+black+box+and+what+it+tells

link to article about possible state laws to REQUIRE EDRs...

http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2006/02/black_boxes_states.html

Link to article that describes how "black boxes" save lives...

http://cms.firehouse.com/web/online/Vehicle-Operations-and-Maintenance/Event-Data-Recorders---The-Black-Box-for-Safer-Response/15$53917

[Withywindle]

6. Please tell me this is an analogy or a copycat post.

[Boojatta]

18. I was simply curious about how people would react.

Suppose an article in an encyclopaedia asserted: "In some countries, airplanes still contain black boxes, but the practice is obsolete and wastes money." I suppose somebody might complain about that, and say that it's an error.

However, would it be appropriate to offer a money reward to people who spot errors in an encyclopaedia? I posted a thread about that in the Education forum. I didn't see any reply that I could interpret as a "yes" answer.

People pay money for encyclopaedias and I wonder why it's worthwhile to spend money for information if it doesn't matter whether or not the information is accurate. Of course, it's possible to claim that there's no point in trying and no matter how money is spent, there will be no reduction in the number or severity of errors in encyclopaedias.

However, aren't there documents associated with airplanes, such as technical manuals for people who repair them? Are those documents filled with errors?

[saltpoint]

8. I'd have to know what percentage of official investigators were in it

for a career, and what percentage were in it for the sheer threshold interest.

Also, we'd have to determine the saltpoint between 'job' and 'hobby.'

What if it fluctuated from time to time, or person to person, or event to event?

And not least, someone has to actually make those boxes, don't they? How many jobs are we talking about who make the boxes and how many more jobs are we talking about that would be in jeopardy in ripple-effect industries?

Are new black boxes driven, or mailed, or flown to Seattle or wherever the next airplane is being made?

Or are they added in a kind of slapdash manner at various stops along a given flight pattern, such as the tarmac in Houston or Atlanta, or Minneapolis?

And just as a point of curiosity, why are they black in the first place? Why not white or purple or snot-green?

Who among the investigators insists on those boxes being black anyway? How much of a fussbudget can you be to insist that those boxes are a given color? It's absurd.

[Runcible Spoon]

9. they dohave a color, they're orange

:shrug:

[saltpoint]

11. Well there ya go. Why are they called 'black boxes' then? And why orange?

I like dark green, dammit.

[lapfog_1]

12. They are called black boxes because they have no means

to see what's going on inside them... and no buttons to push. A literal "black box" to the pilots and other flight personnel.

They are painted orange because that's the color that is most visible against an "earth-tones" backdrop (like, say, a crash debris field).

[saltpoint]

15. Very cool strategy.

But the OP seems to lean toward a world without crash-site investigations.

It's terra nova, big time.

[Runcible Spoon]

16. I think they used to be black in the olden days before Dayglo was invented ;)

I agree that dark green doesn't clash with the normal white/grey of planes as much, though.

[saltpoint]

17. Exactly so. Dark green, especially after Labor Day, is its own

elegant authority, in the opinion of this observer.

[Blue_Tires]

24. i thought they were called black

because despite the bright orange color, it usually ended up charred black in the wreckage...i could be wrong, though

[silverojo]

13. Here's why investigations are a necessity

Those who don't learn from the past are doomed to repeat it.

Just how many deaths will it take, for you to realize this isn't a "hobby"?

[gristy]

14. huh?

[TahitiNut]

19. argumentum ad ignorantiam

:shrug:

[backscatter712]

20. Use the box to figure out why a plane crashed...

then train the crew and fix problems with other aircraft, to prevent them from crashing.

That saves quite a chunk of change - enough to pay for lots of black boxes...

[Boojatta]

21. Two problems

1. How do you know that in the process of fixing the problems, people won't be introducing new problems that are equally severe or perhaps more severe than the original problems?

2. How can anyone know that a crash was prevented? In analyzing a counterfactual hypothetical, isn't there a possibility of error?

Are there certified Buddhist Black Boxes?

[ProgressiveProfessor]

22. Hell, I would like to know where the black box in my car is

Most new cars have one. It records a bunch of parameters. It can also be used to reconstruct accidents as well. There is some controversy about who owns the data in it. Accident investigators (police and private) have been known to remove them without permission. Friend knew where it was in her Ford Explorer and removed it at the scene. Insurance adjuster had a meltdown. She just shrugged her shoulders, and said she did not know what he was talking about. It went off muttering how some other adjuster must have grabbed it.

Honda won't own up to if one exists and where it is in my current car.

[book_worm]

23. exactly how much extra money per ticket per customer does it cost to have a black box on a plane?

"need for a hobby"???that has to be one of the dumbest things I've seen posted on DU this week--and that says a lot.

[MineralMan]

25. Is it time to save bandwidth by abolishing witless posts on DU?

The question must be asked.

Since I need a hobby, I will gladly take on the job of tracking down witless posts and investigating their source.

[spanone]

26. and how much would we save? i'd like to know what causes a plane to crash...

especially if i'm to fly on one...

[Canuckistanian]

27. Indeed. And let's ban autopsies while we're at it.

The past is the past. Just let it go.

[saltpoint]

28. I attribute some plane crashes to demons.

It was in a TWILIGHT ZONE episode I saw once. These passengers looked out the window of the airplane way up in the sky and there was a DEMON on the wing of the plane.

That was like, totally creepy.

[santamargarita]

29. If you want to get rid of a Black Box, get rid of voting machines

~

[Occam Bandage]

30. The second and third listed types of errors tend to be systematic,

as a result of poor ongoing practices. The first is by nature entirely systematic; each aircraft manufactured along the same production run is either going to have the same defect, or if the problem is related to a failure during construction instead of design, is going to be especially at risk of having the same defect.

Commercial aviation is not an artisan field in which craftsmen handle each flight as a new, difficult, and special event; it is not like private aviation, where a crash might well be caused by a dumbass pilot-owner who can't read instruments or didn't know what his stall speed was or forgot to go through his pre-flight safety checklist/walkaround and didn't notice some glaring problem. Commercial aviation is an ongoing near-automated process, in which each person, from Boeing to the hangars to the cockpit to the runway, does the same well-practiced thing over and over and over and over again, with at least double redundancies for critical processes. By determining what caused a particular failure, airlines and/or aircraft manufacturers are able to prevent similar failures from occurring again.