Should there be cameras in the cockpit of airplanes? Why or Why Not?
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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.
Lmao didn’t know we were playing yugioh, but I will defer to the CFI over my checks credentials former student pilot knowledge.
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should the footage be wiped between each flight? yes.
Unfortunately that's not how it would work, current FDR data already isn't wiped between flights, and has been used in the past to discipline crew members.
The issue with that is that when the blame game starts, people inherently try to hide stuff rather than admit fault and work towards a solution.
So where do you draw the line? Should everyone always have a camera pointed at them for "safety"?
I think I was pretty clear on where I draw the line.
thank god I'm not the FAA, right?
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In cab recording is becoming increasingly common in some industries. For instance, the US trucking industry.
I would argue that the effectiveness depends a lot on the goals and attitude behind it. If the goal is to penalize the operator (driver/pilot/engineer/etc.) for every single infraction then it's just a huge waste of money. If the goal is to retain the best operators and help build a culture of safety then I can potentially see some value there.
retain best operators
That is pretty much the exact same attitude that will make people hate it and try to cheat and what not.
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I think I was pretty clear on where I draw the line.
thank god I'm not the FAA, right?
I don't know... You sure seem to have the personality for it!
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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?
Does it matter which pilot flipped the switch though? The switches got flipped, maybe intentionally, maybe by accident. They already know when they got flipped, and have the audio of what they were doing at the time. So they can probably figure if it was possibly related to a procedure in progress. That's about all they need. At best you might get evidence that it was intentional, which won't save any lives, and will likely make people feel even worse.
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You wouldn’t want this video stored on traditional SSDs though. You want it stored on media in a black box like the voice & data recorders so that it can survive crashes, fires, etc. Not sure what the costs associated with that would be though…
I'll leave the implementation details to the experts, but I'm sure there is a suitable option for storing 24 hours of video that adds only a negligible amount to the cost of a quarter-billion dollar airplane like the 787.
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I get what you're saying, but how many thousands of cycles do you think the 787 has on it for this to be the first time they failed, and for two separate switches to fail seconds apart?
Accident investigators are very good at what they do, and I will be willing to bet they will be able to narrow it down to an actual cause, even without a camera.
I'll wait for those very good accident investigators to release a conclusion before I speculate too much about how it happened. Maybe they'll have a conclusive answer based on other evidence, but if they don't, it's easy to imagine how a video could have helped.
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I don't really see how this is a privacy thing. They're on the job, what's so private about that? Plenty of people are under video surveillance on the job.
Plenty of people are under video surveillance on the job.
I hear plenty of people get shot in America every day (on average, it's more than one mass shooting a day). By your logic, it should then be legal, as it's a bad thing happening to plenty of people.
Video surveillance at work is wrong for the same reasons open-plan offices are sexist.
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I think I was pretty clear on where I draw the line.
thank god I'm not the FAA, right?
I think I was pretty clear on where I draw the line.
That's the joke: You weren't. You listed some examples that show you've set an arbitrary line, but you weren't clear on where it was.
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vastly increases the storage requirements
A couple terabytes of SSDs is a trivial expense on a commercial aircraft in 2025.
vastly increases the storage requirements
A couple terabytes of SSDs is a trivial expense on a commercial aircraft in 2025.
I hear a similar argument daily -- that the consumer no-RAID stuff is so cheap and thus storage should be cheap. The stuff you get on the shelf isn't valuable here as it wouldn't survive a crash. The consumer stuff would die quickly just from the brutal power-blips the system undergoes just as part of regular flight operations and power-source switching.
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Does it matter which pilot flipped the switch though? The switches got flipped, maybe intentionally, maybe by accident. They already know when they got flipped, and have the audio of what they were doing at the time. So they can probably figure if it was possibly related to a procedure in progress. That's about all they need. At best you might get evidence that it was intentional, which won't save any lives, and will likely make people feel even worse.
Yes, because if you can figure out which part of the procedure broke down leading to that switch being flipped, you can figure out ways to prevent that from happening again. That's much harder to do with just audio.
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vastly increases the storage requirements
A couple terabytes of SSDs is a trivial expense on a commercial aircraft in 2025.
I hear a similar argument daily -- that the consumer no-RAID stuff is so cheap and thus storage should be cheap. The stuff you get on the shelf isn't valuable here as it wouldn't survive a crash. The consumer stuff would die quickly just from the brutal power-blips the system undergoes just as part of regular flight operations and power-source switching.
It could cost a hundred times as much and we're still only in the fifth digit of the airplane's nine-digit price tag.
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In cab recording is becoming increasingly common in some industries. For instance, the US trucking industry.
I would argue that the effectiveness depends a lot on the goals and attitude behind it. If the goal is to penalize the operator (driver/pilot/engineer/etc.) for every single infraction then it's just a huge waste of money. If the goal is to retain the best operators and help build a culture of safety then I can potentially see some value there.
Its brought in for safety reasons, all very valid and worthwhile, and 2 weeks later theyre watching the cameras live and giving pilots disciplinary meetings for drinking water on company time.
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Why is audio okay, but video is where the line is drawn?
Audio is well established. Video is not, therefore drawing a line before it's actually happening makes sense.
Also it's practically the last possible piece of privacy for pilots.
Also it's not been demonstrated that the significant investment in cameras, video processing, video storage, and making said video processing and storage fast enough and physically robust enough to survive crashing, is actually worthwhile.
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Yes, because if you can figure out which part of the procedure broke down leading to that switch being flipped, you can figure out ways to prevent that from happening again. That's much harder to do with just audio.
I'm not convince that requires video. Don't they communicate out loud what they are doing so the other person knows?
And if it was a mistake, what switch should they have hit that wasn't recorded as being hit. They gotta do all that anyway. -
Its brought in for safety reasons, all very valid and worthwhile, and 2 weeks later theyre watching the cameras live and giving pilots disciplinary meetings for drinking water on company time.
Exactly, I'm torn on this because as a privacy advocate it's a nightmare, but for safety reasons I think it might be helpful. I think that if the video recording is solely for the FAA to look at in the event of a crash like a black box, and not the employer, then maybe? There was an article recently about retail employees having to wear cameras and I thought that sounded like a disaster. It's super dystopian having to wear a camera so that big brother can watch you and make sure you're doing every little thing correctly at your job. If the company has access I have the feeling that's exactly what it would be used for.
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Plenty of people are under video surveillance on the job.
I hear plenty of people get shot in America every day (on average, it's more than one mass shooting a day). By your logic, it should then be legal, as it's a bad thing happening to plenty of people.
Video surveillance at work is wrong for the same reasons open-plan offices are sexist.
Video surveillance at work personally makes me feel more safe at work. If something happens, the police have a bigger chance to find the guilty party.
And I know that the only reason it would ever be used against me, is if i do something very very stupid and/or wrong.
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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.
I think that the video data shouldn't be available to the airline period, let the investigation and regulatory agencies deal with analyzing it.
