"Black box" accompanies the flight of any passenger aircraft, regardless of the airline or country of departure. It stores a lot of information collected while the liner is in the air.
"Black box", also known as onboard storage, is only one of the components of the system for emergency registration of flight parameters. It is an extensive system for collecting, processing and recording many flight data.
The first flight recorder was created back in 1939 by two Frenchmen F. Ussenot and P. Baudouin, but it was only a prototype of those in use today. In 1953, Australian D. Warren proposed a new version of such a device. After participating in the investigation of the plane crash, Warren realized that a device recording the crew's conversations could greatly facilitate his task of finding the cause of the crash.
Warren's flight recorder used magnetic tape, was wrapped in asbent and hid in a steel case. In 1956, the author presented his creation to the public, and already in 1960 all passenger aircraft in Australia were equipped with them. Following this country, a similar decision was made by others.
Today the "black box" is an indispensable part of the aircraft control system. It accumulates various information: engine speed, fuel pressure, temperature behind the turbine, speed, flight altitude, course, and others. The crew's actions are also recorded (retraction and landing gear, the degree of control deviation and other data).
Every modern airliner is equipped with two flight recorders. One of them records the crew's conversations (speech), the other records the flight parameters (parametric). Unlike its progenitor, the modern recorder records information on optical or flash media.
A lot of measures have been taken to form strong "black boxes". Today's recorders are capable of withstanding an overload of three and a half thousand G, data storage is guaranteed within half an hour when the box is covered by fire, within a month when immersed in water to a depth of six thousand meters and for five minutes with static overloads of more than two tons. Despite the middle name "black box", flight recorders are colored orange or red to make them easier to find.
The main task of the on-board storage device is to store information about the flight, it is especially relevant in case of plane crashes. Having found the black box, workers read the data, decrypt and analyze. After that, you can understand whether the crew committed prohibited actions or mistakes, or whether there was a technical breakdown that caused the crash.
But flight recorders help aviation workers not only in the investigation of disasters. After each flight, the ground personnel study the data read from it, which makes it possible to monitor the technical condition of the aircraft and carry out the necessary work. In other words, the black box is helping to improve the reliability and safety of air travel.
