The US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) said on Friday it was studying the possibility of live-streaming flight data recorders from airliners amid calls for such technology following the disappearance of a second airliner in five years.
Joe Kolly, director of research and engineering for the NTSB, declined to comment on the nearly three-week search for Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, which vanished on March 8 less than an hour into a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.
The mystery surrounding the disappearance of the airliner has rekindled discussions about in-flight streaming of black box data that could help locate missing aircraft and let authorities launch accident investigations sooner.
Kolly said discussions about live-streaming black box data from airliners began heating up after it took nearly two years to recover the flight data and voice recorders from an Air France jet that crashed in the Atlantic Ocean on a flight from Brazil to France in 2009.
He said NTSB officials, along with other national safety investigation bodies, groups like the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), equipment manufacturers and airlines were looking at possible requirements for a system that could stream a limited amount of flight data.
“You’re looking for what is the most important information,” he said. “If the airline industry goes to that in the future, what would be those requirements?”
Kolly said governments were also increasingly interested in the possibility of streaming flight data to ensure security.
