Board Says Video 'Black Box' Would Help Solve Plane Crashes
By MATTHEW L. WALD

Published: July 28, 2004


ASHINGTON, July 27 - Investigators seeking the causes of airplane crashes need a third "black box" - a cockpit video recorder - to complement the existing voice and data recorders, officials of the National Transportation Safety Board said Tuesday.

But at the opening of a two-day hearing meant to intensify the agency's four-year campaign for video recorders, the idea met stiff opposition from pilots concerned about their privacy and airlines worried about the weight and expense.

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Agency officials said that a cockpit image would have helped them resolve what happened in crashes like that of EgyptAir 990 on Oct. 31, 1999, which they concluded was a deliberate act by the co-pilot. Officials said a camera would have clarified who was in the cockpit.

A video recording, they said, would also have helped solve the crashes that killed Senator Paul Wellstone of Minnesota in October 2002, and members of the Oklahoma State University basketball team in January 2001, both in small planes.

To protect the privacy of pilots, video recordings would be covered by the same law that protects cockpit voice recordings from public exposure. But Capt. John Cox, executive chairman of the safety committee of the Air Line Pilots Association, pointed to the voice tape from an American Airlines jet that crashed in Colombia in 1995; parts were broadcast by NBC on "Dateline.''

"Once the airplane leaves the 12-mile limit and becomes an international airplane, I have serious concerns about the ability to keep it off the Internet," Mr. Cox said.

Mr. Cox said video images were subjective and not as good as information from flight data recorders; the money could be better spent there, he said, or on other cockpit safety devices.

But Carol J. Carmody, the safety board member who ran the hearing, said, "I have trouble finding a way to be against more data."

Ms. Carmody said she agreed that video alone, like voice recordings alone, left gaps and was subject to misinterpretation. But video, she said, was "another piece of the puzzle."

And other investigators said that the two black boxes now in use left gaps. Among the problems, said Ken Smart, chief inspector of the Air Accidents Investigation Branch, the British equivalent of the N.T.S.B., was that the dialogue between the pilots often left much to be desired.

"It's common to hear, 'Look at this,' and we sit there wondering what 'this' is," Mr. Smart said.

Mr. Smart cited the 1999 crash of a Korean Air freighter at Stansted, near London. The flight data recorder showed that while making its first turn, the Boeing 747 banked to 90 degrees, then crashed. It also showed that the captain's attitude indicator, which gives the plane's orientation in relation to the horizon, was broken. But it did not show why the crew had not figured this out. The voice recorder might have given a clue, he said, but "very little was said."

The safety board recommended cockpit video in 2000, but the Federal Aviation Administration is studying how such a system would be set up. Aviation experts agree, though, that advances in surveillance technology make such a system feasible. Just as the voice recorders use several microphones, a video system might use several cameras, and store the data on computer chips, which have proved resistant to crash impact.

The Air Crash Victims Families Group, representing relatives of passengers on EgyptAir 990, T.W.A. 800, Korean Air 007, Swissair 111 and ValuJet 592, submitted a statement calling for cameras, arguing that "we now live in an environment where for many reasons like safety, security, quality assurance, and others, video imaging and recording has become a fact of our daily life, extending some times even into our private homes."

"Whoever enters an airport waives silently" the right to privacy, the statement said.

But another pilot, John David, quoted a British government study that found that "monitoring people whilst they perform complex tasks has a negative effect on their ability to perform those tasks."

A Navy training expert, Constance Gillan, said that the Navy had successfully used cockpit video surveillance in simulators, to capture nonverbal communications like hand gestures, and that the cameras did not seem to affect the trainees.

"You see some things in the simulator and you're horrified at what they're doing," Ms. Gillan said. But the pilots, she said, "just don't care, or it becomes secondary, and in the background."

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/28/politics/28crashbox.html

US Safety Investigators Want Cameras in Cockpit
Tue Jul 27, 2004 06:10 PM ET
By John Crawley
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. safety investigators nudged regulators on Tuesday to require cameras in cockpits to videotape pilots, which they say could make it easier and faster to determine the cause of accidents.

But the Federal Aviation Administration and pilots, especially, have been reluctant to embrace the concept proposed by the National Transportation Safety Board.

They do not agree that crash-resistant cameras are cost-effective, reliable or that they would guarantee the results investigators envision without invading privacy.

"The benefits of video imaging are vastly overrated," said Capt. Paul Rice, vice president of administration for the Air Line Pilots Association, the largest commercial pilots' union.

"The imagery information gathered from cockpit image recorders is subjective, not objective, and is unlikely to provide the detailed data that proponents promise or that is vital to any accurate air carrier accident investigation," Rice said during NTSB hearings on the proposal.

Pilots also fear video from cockpit cameras would be used against them by their airline or find their way into media coverage of crashes.

"History has shown that in the current environment it is impossible to safeguard the privacy of cockpit voice recorders, much less cockpit image recorders," Rice said.

The industry is also wary of new costs at a time when many airlines continue to struggle financially.

But investigators at the hearing cited numerous private and commercial aircraft accidents where data and cockpit voice recorders did not alone yield clear-cut information. These included the 2002 crash that killed former U.S. Sen. Paul Wellstone, the Egypt Air crash off Massachusetts in 1999, and the ValuJet crash in Florida's Everglades in 1996.

"Needless to say, it's likely that a cockpit image recorder would have aided each of these investigations and allowed more precise and timely findings," said senior safety board air crash investigator Frank Hilldrup.

Federal regulators did not rule out the cameras. "There are some issues that were articulated ... that need to be addressed before we go forward," said FAA spokesman Greg Martin.

http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=domesticNews&storyID=5790454