Why don't airliners have external cameras for the pilots?
 

I was just reading that a 787 had to make an emergency landing in New Orleans for a mechanical issue. They did a flyby, and asked the tower to visually inspect a panel at the rear of the craft.

Given that these planes cost tens of millions of dollars, why wouldn't they have a rudimentary 'surveillance' system using small cameras so the pilots could see what is physically going on with the engines and external surfaces of the plane? Given aircrafts amazing level of technical sophistication at this point, this seems like a no brainer. Do modern commercial aircraft have these systems?

No kidding.... We put cameras up so we can monitor billboards.... I'd think they would be much more vital on a plane?

They are waiting for you to invent the system!

all kidding aside, it would seem that among the hundreds of controls/screens/knobs/switches they could throw a few cameras around the plane and run them to one of the existing screens

I was just thinking about the same thing today! I was flying over the Rocky Mountains and was thinking how cool it would be if the plane had several cameras, and I could switch between them on the display in front of me. Would be really cool if the video was overlaid with educational data.

Do it yourself with a Go Pro. I always liked this one:The Belly of the Beast - YouTube

United and Lufthansa have some external cameras on their A380s. You can't see much of the plane with them. They are probably just there to keep the passengers visually stimulated so they can bare the idea of leaving their phones and iPads off during taxi, takeoff, & landing.

I was on a plane a few years ago in Europe that had an external camera. There was a forward facing camera, and when the plane took off, the entertainment system switched over to the camera so you could see the take off roll. It went off about 1 minute after take off. I don't recall what aircraft it was, but I was headed for India, so it wasn't a small one.

Experience the same at O'Hare airport over 15 years ago on either Delta or AA. Also one of the audio channel was the com's between the plane and the Air Traffic Controller. Was very cool but never seen it again...

They have cameras for passengers to watch on A380s, and on a 747-400 (or something rather) I was on some years back they had a flight tracker with a map and where the plane was with speed and altitude data.

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I would think that if you had too many cameras on the outside this would cause drag
and also there is the expense of installation and maintenance. Also you would need many cameras to cover all the outside of the aircraft.

As an aside way back they used to have cameras in the cockpits of one airline so the passengers could see what was going on in the cockpit. This was discontinued I would think because if anything goes wrong with the aircraft the passengers would get a first hand view of what was going wrong.

I would like to see the ability of external cameras to be disabled in the event of a hostage situation, this would ensure responding forces maintain an advantage. Sorry it's the Police in me....back to your topic.

The reason there are not cameras is they are not required by the FAA.

I was flying over the Rocky Mountains and was thinking how cool it would be if the plane had several camerashttp://www.dutvs.info/h.jpg

That would be another excuse to jack up the prices and invent another surcharge..

Since they make the 'black boxes' out of material that can survive a crash, why don't they make the planes out of the same material?

A cast iron plane would be very heavy.

The first time an airplane crashes the camera manufacturer gets sued even though it had nothing to do causing the crash.

Corporate airplanes have them all the time. We had one on our last airplane in the tail and it looked down on the top for landing.

Others have them on the belly and thats nice if you have a question about the landing gear being down or other issues.

The problem is $$ and these puppies are not cheap. Airlines will not put them on as it makes them ZERO money.