Autobio of a Black Box

Prof. M Zahidul Haque

Prof. M Zahidul Haque

IT was my limitation because I could not keep full record of the conversation of Ash and Mary, the pilot and co-pilot of the doomed flight (better not to disclose the flight number).

The flight was crashed on the Atlantic killing all the passengers and crews on board.

Investigators after recovering me from the deep sea suspected that the plane met with the tragic air accident due to sheer negligence of the pilots. God Knows! But in reality being the Black Box I was fully functional!

I am called Black Box, not because of apartheid. I am not actually black in color but fluorescent orange. Due to my inventor David Warren’s inference, I was named Black Box.

Image of a Black Box

My inventor David Warren was a research scientist at Aeronautical Research Laboratory (ARL) in Melbourne who was in fact working on designing a device for recording personal music. It was when I took birth –the world’s first flight recorder- the Black Box. Naming of me as Black Box was extracted from the electronic devices used in combat aircrafts during the World War II for recoding secret information encased in non-reflective black boxes.

My main function is to act as the plane’s cockpit voice recorder (CVR) and as a flight data recorder (FDR). My shoe-box sized body’s bright fluorescent orange color helps the investigator to locate me in the planes crashed site—may be remote jungle of hilly areas or under the sea.

As I am made of stainless steel or titanium, I can sustain the high impact velocity of the crash thrust and can tolerate a temperature of more than 1000 degrees Celsius for about 30 minutes.

The CVR and FDR are cased inside me under high-temperature tolerable insulation. I am kept in the tail of the aircraft because this is comparatively a safer place to survive a plane crash. I record important information of the flight which includes plane’s speed, altitude, and acceleration, fuel flow, conversation between pilot and the ATC (Air Traffic Control) plus aircraft’s background noise. I have an underwater locator beacon (ULB) powered by a battery (5/6 years of shelf life). I start pinging soon after the plane crash on water with one ping per second for 30 days or as long as the battery back-up supports. Under the present law, all commercial flights need to install me, i.e. Black Box in the aircraft for recording and preserving flight data.

Meanwhile Scientists are working to increase my efficiency by using satellite, GSM facilities.

I think, incorporation of Artificial Intelligence (AI) may also improve my performance.

Perhaps installation of more than one black box in an aircraft preferably in the fuselage may yield concrete information for determining the actual cause(s) of an air-accident.

Till date, I have assisted the investigators in finding out the real cause of air accident. In some cases, however, I failed to furnish enough evidences centering the accident, one of the present time air accident rather mysterious disappearances being the Malaysian Airlines flight MH 370!