Air India AI171 crash: What's a black box and why is it important?
After a Gatwick-bound Air India plane(AI171) with 242 people onboard crashed minutes after takeoff from Ahmedabad's Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel International Airport today, the search for the flight's black box continues, which is crucial equipment to find out what happened moments before the disaster.
A black box is a small machine that records information about an aircraft during its flight. This bright orange or yellow rectangular box is crafted to withstand explosions, fire, water pressure, and high-speed crashes. Discovered by Australian scientist David Warren, it is used to discover the cause of a plane crash.
The black box also comprises two recorders, a cockpit voice recorder for pilot voices and cockpit sounds, and a separate flight data recorder.
The black box recording of the Air India plane can reveal the underlying reason or responses of the Mayday call, or any warnings received by the aircraft, hence contributing to the discovery of the main cause of the crash.
The AI171 Boeing 787 Dreamliner crashed at an altitude of just 625 feet today. The black box can shed light on vital information such as parameters of the engine performance and control surface positions amid others.
A black box comprises four main parts, including,
*an interface designed to fix the device and facilitate recording and playback
* an underwater locator beacon
* the core housing or 'Crash Survivable Memory Unit' made of stainless steel or titanium, which is designed to withstand a force equivalent to 3,400 times the force of gravity
* The recording chip on a circuit board.
The investigation of the 2020 Kozhikode plane crash of the Air India Express Flight 1344 was heavily dependent on the aircraft's black box recordings, which revealed that it was due to a pilot error.
The 2015 Germanwings crash was another incident which was investigated using the plane's black box recordings.
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