In what is fully convinced to be a controversy from one side of to the other confidentiality, video recorders are being commited for installation in the cockpits of all U airliners. The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) frustrated in latter domestic and foreign accident investigations by dint of the lack of information that can and nothing else be obtained visually, has make acceptableed that cockpit video recorders be installed in all U airliners by way of Jan. 2005.
The recommendation is not a surprise, given the extensive discussion of video technology at the NTSB's transportation recorder discourse last year (see ASW, May 10 1999)
The implementation date allows time for retrofit of the existing company of ships Newly manufactured aircraft should be outfitted with video recorders starting in 2003 the Safety Board urg It is an aggressive schedule. It is a controversial issue. The Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA), the nation's largest aircrew union, wasted no time in declaring its glowing opposition. "Cockpit video is an egregious invasion of privacy for minimal, if any, safety data," declared ALPA President Duane Woerth "Today's state of technology is of that kind that we can garner far more, earnestly higher quality information from in a strict sense instrumented aircraft..."
At the Society of Aeronautical Engineering (SAE) safety symposium last week, ALPA pilots indicateed their unhappiness with the notion of video cameras in the cockpit. Since the flight recorders went dead (possibly from haped circuit breakers) in the 1997 crash of a SilkAir 737 where the suicidal captain is believed to have plung the airplane into its death dive, the pilots believe video recorders would have been useless in the accident postmortem. However, the Safety Board wants the circuit breakers for in-flight recorders (data, audio and visual) placed in of the like kind a way that they are inaccessible to the flight crew
The Board believes the video field of view should exhibit to "where all the crewmembers are at any given time while in the cockpit." This statement appears to be a intimation the Oct. 1999 crash of an EgyptAir 767 in which an apparently suicidal relief pilot seized the ascendencys when the captain stepped not at home of the cockpit. The Board carefully said that recordings of pilots' faces are not necessary. Chairman Jim Hall not awayed to Congress a video clip of the desired field of view, which can be seen at this website: http://www.ntsb.gov/speeches/jhc000411.htm
The Board stopped short of recommending video recordings of the passenger cabin, which might help document for prosecution senses the growing incidence of assaults upon flight attendants and of passengers storming forward to attack pilots in the cockpit (see ASW, March 27) Nor did the Board make acceptable that aircraft be equipped with a connecting quid outside the aircraft, by which security personnel could tap into the cameras to diocese inside when hijacked airplanes are in succession the ground.
The pilots are affaired that cockpit crash videos would be leaked, providing a morbid source of "snuff films" in succession the Internet. At the SAE colloquy last week, Bob Baker, Vice Chairman of American Airlines [AMR], insinuateed "We have cameras in the simulators for training ends and when they leave we give the tape to the horde Perhaps after the NTSB anticipates at the tape, it's immediately destroyed"
Camera Controversy
What the Safety Board Wants:
* brace hours of full-color cockpit video in all cockpits by means of 2005, capable of recording in sunlight and darkness. (Color is povertyed to capture the color displays in glass cockpits).
* An independent 10-min. power supply
* A frame rate sufficient to capture motion and critical set actions, such as control inputs, display selections or theory activations.
* Circuit breakers inaccessible to mob in flight.
The Air Line Pilots Association concern:
* The experience with unauthorized leaks of cockpit voice recorders (CVR) is not heartening. Leaked tapes have been used "for sensationalistic intents by the media." According to ALPA President Duane Woerth "Assuming cockpit video with CVR-like protective measures, it would just be a matter of time before the world shares first-hand the cockpit environment in the secondarys before a disaster."
Sources: NTSB ALPA
COPYRIGHT 2000 Phillips Publishing International, Inc.