Should there be cameras in the cockpit of airplanes? Why or Why Not?
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No, because flight recorders already save large amounts of information about what the plane is doing, the pilot inputs, and what is being said audibly. I'd like to understand how a visual that vastly increases the storage requirements would help understand an event.
Agree with your overall point, but in this Air India case a visual definitely would help to see which pilot (if any) flicked those switches to off. The audio is ambiguous.
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- Wait for the final report on Air India before taking any regulatory decisions.
- There's no real technical limitation today on doing this to the safety-critical engineering standards that are demanded on the flight deck. The first CVRs were based on the old half inch tape technology, and they only recorded something like 20 minutes on a circular tape.
- Wait for the final report first; but exactly what additional information do you hope to get off the video feed that won't be on the CVR + FDR? I am skeptical that this accident will not be "solvable" from the information that is available.
- If the regulators want to fight the pilot unions on this, they can. And they can probably win. Pilots don't necessarily have a ton of leverage on this kind of issue.
In particular, I expect that the final report will contain a lot more analysis of FADEC telemetry from the FDR. That simply wasn't analyzed in time for the preliminary report.
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Agree with your overall point, but in this Air India case a visual definitely would help to see which pilot (if any) flicked those switches to off. The audio is ambiguous.
Wouldn't the state of the switches be logged on the flight recorder?
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Asking because of Air India 171. Pilots and their unions are objecting to it because of "privacy" reasons. What do you think about it?
A camera wouldn't have prevented anything, it would only make blame slightly easier.
Maybe improved mental health resources for pilots would be more helpful.
Or maybe not having a single point of failure for something so critical. Airplane engines are made to burn for a while before they become a problem, so why can't a two engine shutdown be inhibited below a certain radar altitude, or something of that nature?
Seems like a lot of pretty easy fixes that would work preemptively, rather than just another $20 part marked up to $20,000 because it comes with a FAA part number, that can only be used to assign blame after the fact.
Let me ask everyone this, would you want a camera in your office? Or should nurses have to wear body cameras all shift just so if something happens to a patient they can make sure they can blame the correct person?
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A camera wouldn't have prevented anything, it would only make blame slightly easier.
Maybe improved mental health resources for pilots would be more helpful.
Or maybe not having a single point of failure for something so critical. Airplane engines are made to burn for a while before they become a problem, so why can't a two engine shutdown be inhibited below a certain radar altitude, or something of that nature?
Seems like a lot of pretty easy fixes that would work preemptively, rather than just another $20 part marked up to $20,000 because it comes with a FAA part number, that can only be used to assign blame after the fact.
Let me ask everyone this, would you want a camera in your office? Or should nurses have to wear body cameras all shift just so if something happens to a patient they can make sure they can blame the correct person?
Pretty easy fix? There might be an emergency checklist somewhere that requires you to shut off engines. Testing the fuel cut off is part of the pre flight, at least for small airplanes. I see no reason why it wouldn’t be for larger airplanes.
Unless you’re type rated in the airframe or work for Boeing, I would refrain from offering simple fixes.
Also radar altitude? Do they not use pitot tubes for altitude?
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Asking because of Air India 171. Pilots and their unions are objecting to it because of "privacy" reasons. What do you think about it?
Privacy reasons? Now I’m wondering what really happens in the cockpit.
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Wouldn't the state of the switches be logged on the flight recorder?
it is, mentour pilot released a video about the preliminary report the other day where it's mentioned that the fuel pumps were set back to active with a 4 second delay between flipping each switch.
this link should be set to the time stamp where he goes over what happened with the switches: https://youtu.be/lVS76zcpZok?t=1102
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Wouldn't the state of the switches be logged on the flight recorder?
Yes, but it might be very important to determine: did the pilot/copilot flick the switch, or did the switch change state without user input?
Is the crew at fault (training issue/operator error) or is the manufacturer at fault (design flaw) or was the ground crew at fault (improper maintenance)?
A camera could help determine that, if it had the right field of view.
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No, because flight recorders already save large amounts of information about what the plane is doing, the pilot inputs, and what is being said audibly. I'd like to understand how a visual that vastly increases the storage requirements would help understand an event.
Frame rate doesn’t necessarily have to be high. Idk how the black boxes on airplanes work, but surely storage options have increased a lot since their invention, right?
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A camera wouldn't have prevented anything, it would only make blame slightly easier.
Maybe improved mental health resources for pilots would be more helpful.
Or maybe not having a single point of failure for something so critical. Airplane engines are made to burn for a while before they become a problem, so why can't a two engine shutdown be inhibited below a certain radar altitude, or something of that nature?
Seems like a lot of pretty easy fixes that would work preemptively, rather than just another $20 part marked up to $20,000 because it comes with a FAA part number, that can only be used to assign blame after the fact.
Let me ask everyone this, would you want a camera in your office? Or should nurses have to wear body cameras all shift just so if something happens to a patient they can make sure they can blame the correct person?
A camera wouldn't have prevented anything, it would only make blame slightly easier.
Blame isn't necessarily the important thing for the outcome of an investigation. It is important to determine fault for the sake of preventing future failures. Did the crew flip the wrong switch, or did the system change state without the crew doing anything? Is there a training issue, or an overwork issue, or design flaw, or a maintenance problem?
You can't answer these questions without knowing the sequence of events prior to the failure, and the flight recorder data that shows a system state change might not be enough if you can't determine how or why that change happened.
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Asking because of Air India 171. Pilots and their unions are objecting to it because of "privacy" reasons. What do you think about it?
No. For what? Occasional and slight benefit to some subset of accident investigations?
Pilots deal with more than enough bullshit. Putting them on camera is outrageous.
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No, because flight recorders already save large amounts of information about what the plane is doing, the pilot inputs, and what is being said audibly. I'd like to understand how a visual that vastly increases the storage requirements would help understand an event.
The concern here is storage requirements?
Having no visual is a huge disadvantage. You miss a great deal of context.
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A camera wouldn't have prevented anything, it would only make blame slightly easier.
Maybe improved mental health resources for pilots would be more helpful.
Or maybe not having a single point of failure for something so critical. Airplane engines are made to burn for a while before they become a problem, so why can't a two engine shutdown be inhibited below a certain radar altitude, or something of that nature?
Seems like a lot of pretty easy fixes that would work preemptively, rather than just another $20 part marked up to $20,000 because it comes with a FAA part number, that can only be used to assign blame after the fact.
Let me ask everyone this, would you want a camera in your office? Or should nurses have to wear body cameras all shift just so if something happens to a patient they can make sure they can blame the correct person?
You can’t make a case for something without the proof that something happened.
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Asking because of Air India 171. Pilots and their unions are objecting to it because of "privacy" reasons. What do you think about it?
Yes and no.
Yes because these people are at work; if they're not using a bathroom, having cameras recording them while they perform their job is within their employers purview to do.
The can object all they want, but it's something that is, and can be done for pretty much everyone working. Think about cashier's at grocery stores and convenience stores... They're almost always on camera all the time. I can hear someone saying "but that's different, it's for security".... Is it?
Having a flight recording of what the cockpit is doing during the flight, seems like something you would want when you are entrusting them with a multimillion dollar piece of machinery and hundreds of people's lives.
On the other hand, where the hell is that information going to go? The black box? Doubtful, that shit is already cram packed with stuff they need to record. On a device in the cockpit? Sure, you'll never find it in a crash, but you do you, I guess.
So I'm on the no side because unless you're putting it in the flight recorder, it's borderline useless for anything beyond scrutinizing someone doing their job. If you are putting it in the flight recorder, is there any information that's going to get left out to make space for the video of pilots picking their noses at 30,000 ft?
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Asking because of Air India 171. Pilots and their unions are objecting to it because of "privacy" reasons. What do you think about it?
the question is too broad. should cameras be in cockpits? yes.
should video streams of those cameras be available live? no.
should recordings of the cockpit be stored on the blackboxes? yes
should the footage be wiped between each flight? yes.
pilots have far too much on their minds while flying a plane, no reason to allow a micromanaging ego trip of an executive access to their cockpit to provide unhelpful "critiques" for better flights. let the talent do what you hired them for and take appropriate action after the incident with the supplied evidence.
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Privacy reasons? Now I’m wondering what really happens in the cockpit.
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Pretty easy fix? There might be an emergency checklist somewhere that requires you to shut off engines. Testing the fuel cut off is part of the pre flight, at least for small airplanes. I see no reason why it wouldn’t be for larger airplanes.
Unless you’re type rated in the airframe or work for Boeing, I would refrain from offering simple fixes.
Also radar altitude? Do they not use pitot tubes for altitude?
Pitot tubes measure a plane's airspeed. It's static ports that measure barometric pressure. radar altitude directly measures the distance between the ground and the plane using radio waves is more useful on final approach
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A camera wouldn't have prevented anything, it would only make blame slightly easier.
Maybe improved mental health resources for pilots would be more helpful.
Or maybe not having a single point of failure for something so critical. Airplane engines are made to burn for a while before they become a problem, so why can't a two engine shutdown be inhibited below a certain radar altitude, or something of that nature?
Seems like a lot of pretty easy fixes that would work preemptively, rather than just another $20 part marked up to $20,000 because it comes with a FAA part number, that can only be used to assign blame after the fact.
Let me ask everyone this, would you want a camera in your office? Or should nurses have to wear body cameras all shift just so if something happens to a patient they can make sure they can blame the correct person?
It doesn't prevent anything in the moment. It serves as an investigation tool and learning tool after the fact. And that is the real prevention tool. We don't have to rely on cockpit narration to know more about what's going on beyond the instrumentation and controls.
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It doesn't prevent anything in the moment. It serves as an investigation tool and learning tool after the fact. And that is the real prevention tool. We don't have to rely on cockpit narration to know more about what's going on beyond the instrumentation and controls.
What's to learn? From this incident specifically.
That a pilot with a history of mental health issues most likely did it? What does that teach us? And what are we going to do about it?
Anything shy of treating it as a disability and retiring the pilot with full pay until their retirement age will result in people still hiding rather than looking for help when they need it.
The USA doesn't have cockpit cameras and has a pretty exceptional safety record, so I'm not sure what anyone is hoping to achieve other than blame someone, which is entirely contradictory to safety.
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Pretty easy fix? There might be an emergency checklist somewhere that requires you to shut off engines. Testing the fuel cut off is part of the pre flight, at least for small airplanes. I see no reason why it wouldn’t be for larger airplanes.
Unless you’re type rated in the airframe or work for Boeing, I would refrain from offering simple fixes.
Also radar altitude? Do they not use pitot tubes for altitude?
Ohhhhhhh buddy you activated my trap card. I happen to have multiple type ratings, and I still consider myself far from an expert. However I do still hold a CFI so I'm going to try to teach you some stuff!
Every airplane that I've been required to have a type rating for has a radar altimeter. A lot of systems already use that information, from auto landings, to caution message inhibits, down to GLD spoilers. Watch any "landing an airliner" YouTube videos, I feel pretty safe in saying generally you will hear an audible "50, 40, 30, 20, 10", that information is usually derived from the radar altimeter.
While you are correct, there are emergency checklists that do require engine shutdowns, there are very few that would require that to be done weight off wheels and under 1000ft AGL. Off the top of my head, the ditching (landing in water) checklist would, but that could be tied to a ditching switch, if equipped, which since I don't have a 787 type, I don't know if it does, but I would guess it probably does.
Seeing as you know what a pitot tube is I'm going to assume you at least have some interest in flying. The pitot tube is used for airspeed, what you're probably thinking of is the other part of that system called the static port. That's used for things like altitude and vertical speed.
Circling back to my "simple fix", my current airframe has triple redundant hydraulics with dual redundant pumps for each. So for something that has that much redundancy, don't you think something as critical as an engine should require more than one switch to shutdown, at least at an altitude of high vulnerability? Just food for thought.
