Correct. Pilot was just hauling a*s to get to the destination asap.

the DFDR, or digital flight data recorder, is not an audio unit, that is the CVR, or cockpit voice recorder.

The DFDR records other parameters like flight control position, aircraft attitude, engine power, speed etc.

Why is the "black box" in a plane at this point? Every crash they wonder if the data is recoverable. With current technology you think that data would be transmitted someplace or to the cloud.

Just not practical with the amount of data required I think. Transmitting data from an airplane costs, and isn't always possible anyways, depending where they are.

To give you an idea, we had a client choose to watch a live stream of the superbowl in flight aboard an internet equipped falcon 900. That bill was 92 000 USD.

I really really wanted to see that game live.

Even if 7xx mph were achievable straight down (ground speed = zero) and afterburner non-sense aside, not sure the wings would stay attached for long. If full power straight down and wings peeled off, the fuselage would also slow as propulsion would depart with 737 wings. Unfortunately, 1xx, 2xx, 3xx...7xx straight down all end the same for passengers.

Depends on the airplane… Most airplanes have data storage capabilities that can be downloaded after they land, and some have that feature where a lot of parameters are itransmitted live but it’s usually FOQA data and not specific flight control data.


My first guess is suicide, my second guess would be some type of scab trim malfunction.

That's right, the DFDR records flight crew inputs, but I thought the CVR was a component of the this. Not all aircraft have CVR's. Does the if the NG this?

Modern airline transport category planes have both.

The NG came out in 1997. Don't know if that was required for C of A then.

Never mind. Per the Aviation Herald this did have the CVR and it was recovered.

Not sure when wings would rip off. The A380 can fly over 650mph air speed but it's way faster than lesser planes.

The jet I was in had a tail wind that would have lessened the true air speed so it would not have suffered the same stress as the subject jet.

I'm keeping the AB comment as all it did was embellish my personal story. I don't think I'm the first in this forum to do that.

Excellent summary

Tailwinds lessen TAS? Please elaborate.

If you have a smart phone, ask Siri or Alexa or whatever to display the aircraft overhead right now. There are thousands of airplanes flying at any one moment. Many commercial aircraft are out over the ocean, and the only place to transmit date to would be a satellite. Keeping a satellite lock while traveling at 500 to 600 MPH is not an easy task, and likely only the military or Air Force One would want to try.

The on board boxes are pretty well designed to survive almost any crash, subsequent fires or sinking to thousands of feet in the ocean. They can record a lot of data that no transmission would be able to keep up.

If you havent checked it out there is an app called flight radar 24. Pretty interesting to see whats going on in the sky all over the world.

I pay $11 a year for mine which allows you to set alerts based on tail number. I get a buzz every time the state troopers are flying for example.

It does not but the air is moving with the plane, so it's sort of like walking fast on one of those treadmill things at the airport. :)

Indicated airspeed. Skuze me.

...while I touch the sky.

I hope that the Chinese version of the NTSB gets this right.

There are varying degrees of willingness on the part of many countries to get to the heart of the root cause of an accident.

I investigated a crash at the Sikorsky Factory that killed the Sikorsky pilot I was renting a room from during the week...I drove home on weekends and stayed with Yong during the week.

During the investigation, one of the engineers from the Depot in Cherry Point that had engineering oversight of fielded CH-53's remember an accident in an Asian country that may have been similar in nature to ours.

What we thought was the root cause aircraft dynamic component assembly for our crash, which we broke down and investigated in detail, was still intact in that country and had not been investigated or dis-assembled..

She flew over with a team that opened up the large assembly and found the exact same failure mode, from an accident that happened over five years prior.

We grounded the fleet of CH-53's.

Yes, it would be required to have both and FDR and a CVR.

Any transport category after 1990 has both, with some exceptions for smaller aircraft.