Airplane black box: why is it needed and what color is it really? . What is an airplane black box and what color is it really? Decryption of black boxes of different aircraft

SUBSCRIBE TO THE CHANNEL!!! The last words of the Boeing crew that crashed in SOCHI have become known. They do not reveal the whole story of what happened, but they allow us to draw some conclusions. We return to the recent Boeing crash in Rostov-on-Don. This is a transcript of the last words of the plane's crew, a minute before impact with the ground. The document is not official, from sources in the investigation commission, where the information from the voice recorder was transferred to paper. Without claiming the truth - this will only be in the conclusions of the investigation - we will now try to simulate the situation that developed on board before the disaster. So, the FlyDubai Boeing-737-800 was unable to land in Rostov in difficult weather conditions and the aircraft commander, 37-year-old Aristos Socrates, decides to go around. At this time, the autopilot operates. Time 1 hour 40 minutes 00 seconds GMT. “We’re gaining 50,” this means going to a level of 1500 meters. The Boeing rises at an angle of 15 degrees, a completely normal mode. In these frames we see the plane going up, beyond the surveillance camera's view. The climb continues automatically for 40 seconds. Having not reached the flight level, the commander turns off the autopilot. The reason is not yet clear. Perhaps the plane fell into - in pilots' slang - atmospheric scissors; it could have been shaken violently. But it is from this second, after the autopilot is turned off, that the Boeing dives down. And here are the words from the transcript, translated by us into Russian for clarity, which sound in the cockpit: “Don’t worry, pull!” Time 1 hour 40 minutes and 40 seconds GMT. That is, the pilots could not do anything with the plane, which rushed its nose towards the ground. This is the specialists' version. Having turned off the automation, the pilot tried to put the Boeing into level flight, but it was at that moment that the stabilizer switched into dive mode; it is located at the keel. In this mode, the elevator no longer has any effectiveness, the plane practically does not respond to the control wheel, and the pilots clearly did not understand that the stabilizer was to blame for the sharp dive. Why the stabilizer turned on in peak mode is a question. It is operated by a button that pilots call a “stick”. That is, during turbulence, the commander, switching to manual mode, could accidentally catch this joystick, and did not notice, since he had previously complained of chronic fatigue. Otherwise, this is some kind of unprecedented automation surprise. For the last six seconds, in the cockpit, according to our source, inhuman screams have been heard. The plane accelerates into the ground at 1 hour 41 minutes and 00 seconds GMT. All 62 people died. Let us repeat once again that official conclusions about the causes of the disaster can only be drawn based on the results of the investigation.

The MK correspondent found out what pilots usually say before a disaster and why only women are trusted to restore flight recorder tapes

On November 17, a Boeing 737 of Tatarstan Airlines crashed during landing. All passengers and crew members on the plane died. The only witnesses to what caused the pilots to throw the plane into a deadly spin are “black boxes.” But sometimes they are silent.

They searched for the voice recorder from the plane that crashed in Kazan for several days: when it hit the ground, the drive flew out of the recording device. It was badly damaged. Will experts be able to completely recreate the pilots' negotiations? In what situations is it impossible to obtain information from the on-board recorder? And why do specialists turn to the Institute of Forensic Science for help when decoding voice recorders? To understand how “black boxes” are deciphered, the MK correspondent went to the Research Center for the Operation and Repair of Aviation Equipment of the Ministry of Defense, where they have been investigating plane crashes for seventy years. But if MAK deals with “civilian” recorders, “black boxes” from military aircraft end up here. However, the principle of decrypting and restoring data in both departments is identical.

At the entrance of this brick building on the outskirts of Lyubertsy there is no sign with the name of the enterprise - only a modest inscription: “Bureau of Passes.” There is no sign with the house number on the wall. But even in Soviet times, local residents knew what the specialists working here had to deal with. It is no coincidence that the ERAT Research Center has long been given an unofficial name: Research Institute of “Black Boxes”.

Here they investigated the death of Gagarin and found out the reason for the crash of the An-124 transport into residential buildings near Irkutsk in December 1997. Now they are looking into the cause of the death of the Kazakh MiG-31 and the Ka-52 helicopter, which frightened the residents of Moscow Zhulebin several months ago.

— In fact, “black boxes” are just a cog in the mechanism of investigating aircraft accidents, a prelude. In our center, all components of fallen aircraft are examined. But it is the “black boxes” that tell specialists the direction in which they need to move, says Yuri Popov, leading researcher at the ERAT Research Center. “Therefore, the investigation of any plane crash begins with the study of the data from the recorders.

Doesn't burn in fire and doesn't drown in water

At the stand of the speech information research laboratory, “black boxes” are displayed in a row - orange spheres, capsules, cylinders. Perfectly smooth, with the inscriptions written on the bright sides: “Emergency recorder. Do not open."

Nearby are similar ones, but brought from the sites of plane crashes. After falling from a height of many kilometers and spending several hours in the fire, the titanium armor, a couple of centimeters thick, shrank and cracked, like a tin can thrown into the fire. Mangled, with soot-covered sides—these recorders are found among the wreckage of crashed planes.

“It’s clear that the orange sphere is just a shell for the device itself.” The recorder is located inside,” leading researcher at the ERAT Research Center Vasily Svintsov approaches the metal orange ball, unscrews the screws, and lifts the lid. When opened, the container looks like a saucepan or pressure cooker. By the way, not only the MK correspondent had associations with kitchen utensils. In aviation slang, this type of recorder has long been dubbed “pots”.

Armor for recorders is cast from titanium or heavy-duty steel. The cavity between the body and the mechanical filling is filled with special plastic.

This is what solid-state recorders look like: the board (4) is protected by its own armor (3), which is placed in a titanium case (1, 2).

— When exposed to fire, this material foams, providing protection from high temperatures. Previously, fire-resistant asbestos was used for the same purposes,” explains Vasily Petrovich.

In fact, only the first of the on-board recording systems mass-produced in the USSR have a spherical shape - this is what “black boxes” are called in aviator parlance.

— For some reason, it was believed that it was this design that provided the device with the greatest strength. In practice, this was not confirmed: in more than half of the cases, after a serious accident, such an armored cap broke into pieces like an eggshell. It is clear that the film inside was not preserved. Now they are gradually being abandoned. Among civilian aircraft, such aircraft are installed only on the Tu-134; among military aircraft, such aircraft are installed on the An-12, An-22, and some models of helicopters.

The armor of modern recorders has the shape of a cylinder, capsule or even parallelepiped.

— There are a huge number of modifications. Each manufacturer develops a form based on the location where the recorder will be installed. For example, the first generation of foreign ones was made in the form of a tablet, then models were introduced in the form of a loaf of Darnitsa bread. Nowadays, they are increasingly placed in a cylindrical body,” explains Yuri Popov, leading researcher at the ERAT Research Center. — The armor of recorders used today is already many times stronger: after the transition to flash media, which takes up less space, it became possible to devote a larger volume to armor protection.

Modern recorders are capable of being in a fire for an hour at a temperature of 1100 degrees. They will quietly lie for more than a month in water at a depth of six kilometers. The body cannot withstand the impact of a falling weight weighing 226 kilograms with a tip with a diameter of only six millimeters.

But this is not enough. The recent disaster in Kazan is further confirmation of this.

Why are orange spheres and cylinders dubbed “black boxes”? There are several versions.

— Perhaps the name migrated from cybernetics, where this concept denotes an object whose internal structure is unknown. In addition, in the first models of recorders, information was stored on photographic film. In order not to expose the media, the parts of the device were painted black,” Yuri Vasilyevich lists the versions. — But most likely that’s what journalists called the registrars. Having seen the recorder covered with soot and removed from its casing, one of the reporters came up with a simple and figurative euphemism for the device.

Voice recorder with magnetic tape.

What is hidden under the titanium shell? There are two types of recorders - parametric and speech. The first ones record readings from all aircraft systems, from speed and altitude to engine pressure and flap position. Now there are more than a thousand parameters in this list. A voice recorder is essentially a tape recorder and records all conversations in the cockpit of an aircraft - both between crew members and with ground services.

Most modern airliners are equipped with digital recorders. They store information on a solid-state drive, or, more simply, a flash card.

“If analog recorders were two different devices, one of which was installed in the rear of the ship, the other in the cockpit, then modern technologies make it possible to write parametric and speech information on one medium,” explains Yuri Vasilyevich. — However, even in this case, two devices are installed on one side: the main one and the backup one.

All civilian ships should soon switch to solid-state recorders - this is required by the International Civil Aviation Organization, ICAO.

But analog recorders will remain in service for at least another five years.

“They record on the thinnest steel wire, with a diameter of only five hundredths of a millimeter, or on magnetic tape,” explains Yuri Popov. — Among the military, the An-24, An-26, Su-25 attack aircraft, and Tu-95 bombers are equipped with such equipment. In civil aviation, such recorders remained on the Tu-134, Tu-154. Therefore, experts from both our institute and MAK have to deal with two types of devices.

Yuri Vasilyevich himself managed to work with both military “black boxes” and civilian ones. For five years he headed the department of parametric and sound information processing at MAK. But, having worked in civilian life, he decided to return to the military institute, where he left in the mid-2000s.

— Yuri Vasilyevich, is the technology for decoding information different between you and MAK?

— By and large, no. But Aviation Committee experts still have to deal more with solid-state drives.

Where does the receptionist's beard come from?

By the time we learn about another plane crash from the news, a commission has already been formed in the military or civilian department to investigate it. Each incident in the air is assigned a specific code.

— Non-critical equipment failure is indicated by the letters AB. The abbreviation ABC means that the accident is urgent, with human casualties or loss of the aircraft,” Vasily Svintsov explains the terminology used by the military. — The letters AVL opposite the operational task mean that a flying laboratory is being sent to the crash site.

Yuri Popov disassembles one of the first models of “black boxes”.

By the way, only this institute has such a board. Specialists can fly to the crash site (in aviation slang, “to the pit”) at any time of the day or night. But this is not always necessary.

— If the “black boxes” are not damaged, you can obtain data from them at the aviation unit closest to the accident site. They can be deciphered there,” explains Vasily Petrovich.

Drives are delivered to the ERAT Research Center laboratories only with severe damage.

“Look at the records we have to deal with,” Vasily Petrovich shows lumps of wire that look like a washcloth. — We call these skeins a beard. And this is happiness if the film is just tangled and not torn into dozens of segments...

A special case has been developed to transport damaged storage media. But often he is not at the scene of the tragedy. More than once, the most valuable records were delivered to experts in ordinary boxes or travel bags.

But it is the “black boxes” recovered from the seabed that require the most attention.

— The recorder can lie under water for a month. But once you extract a recording from it outside of laboratory conditions, it most likely will no longer be decipherable. Such recorders are delivered to us in containers with the water in which they were found,” explains Vasily Svintsov.

— And how often do you have to restore such records?

— Rarely, but it happened. For example, I was involved in restoring the recorders of a South Korean Boeing 737. On the night of September 1, 1983, this aircraft, flying from New York to Seoul, deviated from its course, violated USSR airspace and was shot down by our interceptor in the Sakhalin area. We looked for recorders at the bottom of the Sea of ​​Japan for quite a long time. Partly because they simply had no idea what foreign registrars could look like. I remember several times we pulled out ordinary players from under the water... When we finally discovered the recorders, it became clear that the voice information was recorded on an ordinary magnetic tape. We listened to it on the Comet tape recorder. True, in order for the tracks on the American tape to coincide with the tracks on the domestic tape recorder, it was necessary to place blades under the magnetic heads.

Records are “treated” with kerosene and a soldering iron

The data recovery process takes from several days to several months. Moreover, the easiest way to “resurrect” is wire media that has been in fire. With cotton wool soaked in ordinary kerosene, the soot is simply removed from them. But the recording can only be restored if the flame temperature did not exceed 650 degrees.

“Ten degrees above this critical point and the recording will be lost forever.” At this temperature, the wire simply becomes demagnetized,” explains Vasily Petrovich. “We can determine this by eye: if the “cheeks” of the cassette are melted, it means there is nothing left on the recording.

Magnetic tape is even less resistant to high temperatures. Already at 150 degrees the top layer begins to “boil”. Such a record cannot be restored.

— If the wire is torn into several pieces by an impact, then they are first wound onto small special devices. Women do this most often: the work is so intricate that it cannot be accomplished with rough male fingers. Besides, only the fairer sex has the patience... experts note.

Then the pieces of wire begin to be connected - the beginning of one with the end of the previous one.

“We don’t even work with segments shorter than twenty centimeters.” The fact is that 3-4 sounds pronounced by a person fit into this length. Even if we tried to connect such pieces, we still would not catch the meaning of the phrase. The result would be a set of sounds.

Torn magnetic film is “treated” using the same method as tape in household cassettes.

— The break points are simply glued together with tape. But such a film can only be played once. Therefore, we transfer all recordings onto a laboratory cassette. We leave it in the archive as a means of objective control.

Solid state drives are more resistant to mechanical damage. Mainly due to the fact that in addition to general armor they also have a personal shell. In addition, a static system is by definition more reliable. But even they are most often damaged when falling from a great height.

“Information recovery work depends on the nature of the damage,” explains Yuri Popov. — If the board is preserved, it is removed from the drive and installed in another. If the board is damaged, they try to unsolder individual microcircuits and attach them to a new board.

Ultimately, regardless of whether experts are dealing with an analog or digital recorder, the recording ends up in the computer. Using a special program, it is cleared of extraneous noise as much as possible. But it will take several more days, or even weeks, before the transcript of the pilots’ conversations reaches the investigator’s desk.

Vasily Svintsov shows in what condition the wire with recordings of pilots’ conversations sometimes arrives at their laboratory.

“Perfect pitch is not needed. What’s more important is experience...”

It would seem that it could be simpler: listen to the recording and transfer it to paper. But even when transcribing a lecture or interview, sometimes you have to rewind some fragments several times: either the interlocutor will whisper, or the alarm of a car parked nearby will sound. Now imagine the situation in the cockpit a few minutes before the collision with the ground: the emergency siren is blaring, the dispatchers are shouting in a voice that is not their own, the pilots are swearing...

And in this hubbub, experts need to hear every word.

“Let’s conduct an experiment,” the interlocutors suggest. “We’ll let you listen to a few minutes of a recording of a speech from a burning plane.” Then we will compare what you heard with the transcript.

To make it easier, they even gave me a picture of the incident: when landing, the plane touched a snow parapet on the runway. The impact was not strong, but it was enough to pierce the fuel tank. A fire started. But the crew of the ship has not yet noticed the emergency situation. Only ground services saw what was happening.

I heard the first words of the navigator quite clearly: “Altitude three hundred and sixty.” But the very next phrase was drowned in the grinding of the laryngophone - the same sounds are made by a badly scratched record.

- Not understood? And the navigator just announced the altitude: three hundred and fifty,” Vasily Petrovich translated.

Through the grinding I heard a couple more phrases. "What was it?" - asked the pilot. Apparently he felt the blow.

Vasily Petrovich shows me the protocol: the time in it is indicated down to fractions of seconds.

Pilot (P): I don’t understand what’s on their runway?

Flight Director (RP): Fire, fire.

P: I don’t understand...

RP: Turn off the engines, turn off the engines!

P: (inaudible)

RP: Leave the plane, slow down, leave the plane! Carcasses, throw them off...

Seeing what kind of cacophony experts manage to isolate words from, it may seem that people with perfect pitch are working here. They would not work in a laboratory, but in the orchestra pit of the Bolshoi Theater. But, as it turned out, hearing is not the main thing in such work.

— Knowledge of aviation terminology is much more important. At MAK we even conducted an experiment: girls with a musical education and professional pilots were given the same recording to listen to. It’s not hard to imagine that the ladies, although they had perfect pitch, could not decipher almost anything,” recalls Yuri Popov.

But sometimes even experts are powerless. In difficult cases, linguists come to their aid.

“I remember that while deciphering one of the recordings, we could not understand the last words of the pilot. But this is the key point. The recording had to be sent to the Institute of Forensic Science, where some of the best linguists work, recalls Vasily Petrovich. — We waited a month for the results. When the protocol finally came to us, it turned out that the last words of the pilot were obscene language...

— Can’t experts guess from consonance?

- No, you need to hear every word. In some cases, it may be the key to further investigation. If the experts are looking for consonance, each of them needs to be assigned another specialist who would check his colleague’s guesses. Although sometimes this is done: in controversial situations, several specialists listen to the recording at once. Then they choose the option that matches the majority,” says Popov.

Understanding the meaning of what was said is not enough. It is also necessary to accurately determine which crew member owns a particular speech fragment.

— Usually, for this purpose, people who have experience communicating with the crew are invited to the laboratory. Moreover, it is obligatory to use the aircraft intercom. Close relatives and friends will not help here: SPU greatly distorts the voice, says Vasily Svintsov.

But at the moment the emergency situation develops, the emotional intensity of the speech is so high that all its characteristics “float”: the timbre, tonality changes... Sometimes the dispatcher simply does not recognize the pilot’s voice. Plus, one frequency can be used by several aircraft at once. Therefore, SRC ERAT has developed a unique method for identifying “subscribers”.

— To get in touch, you need to press the push-to-talk button—the button that switches from receiving to transmitting. There is a click sound on the air, after which the person can speak. If this click is deciphered on an oscilloscope, it turns out that the curve of each device is unique - like a person’s fingerprints. Based on the tangent curve, we can accurately determine who owns a given speech fragment,” explains Vasily Svintsov. — By the way, we transferred this technology to IAC.

— Which recorder is easier to decipher: parametric or speech?

“Of course, parametric,” says Yuri Popov, who has worked with two types of devices, confidently. — The expert just needs to transfer the information to the computer, and the program will do everything for you. The data is ultimately released in the form of graphs. Speech identification cannot yet be done without a person. But working with speech recorders is also difficult from a psychological point of view. Not everyone can hear the last words of pilots a hundred times. It takes some getting used to.

— What does the crew usually say a second before hitting the ground? It is believed that they turn to family, loved ones...

- This is all fiction. Usually they fight. Rough...

How does a black box work?

The Bild newspaper reports that a video recording was discovered at the crash site of the A320 plane that crashed in France, capturing the last seconds of the airliner’s flight, writes TASS.

According to the publication, the video shows that passengers on board flight 4U9525 understood the desperate situation they were in: frightened exclamations of people in different languages ​​can be heard. A knock can also be heard, and towards the end of the recording, the screams of dying people become louder.

Despite the poor quality of the recording, there is no doubt about its authenticity.

The newspaper also published information from the A320 “voice recorder,” which recorded sound in the cockpit.

According to the “black box” (the text in English is published by Ekho Moskvy), the plane took off at 10.00, and after 27 minutes reached an altitude of 38,000 feet (11,500 meters). Earlier, the first pilot told Lubitz that he forgot to go to the toilet before the flight. His assistant replied: “Go whenever you want.” Afterwards, he tried several more times to literally escort the captain out of the cockpit, promising to keep the flight under control.

At 10.28 the pilot got out and Andreas Lubitz clicked the lock so that the door could not be opened from the outside.

At 10.30 the sounds of the autopilot are heard - it is reprogrammed to speed up the descent of the airliner - to 100 feet (30 meters) in a matter of minutes.

At 10:33 the landing begins: the plane rapidly loses altitude - 3,000 feet (900 meters) per minute. Air traffic controllers realized something was wrong and tried to contact the plane, but Lubitz did not respond.

The captain is trying to get into the cockpit: “It’s me!” he shouts to Lubitz, but he does not react, although he sees the pilot on the screen. The captain takes an oxygen tank or fire extinguisher to break down the door, Lubitz remains silent. The captain shouts: “For God's sake, open the door!”, but Lubitz ignores the screams.

At 10:34 the first alarm goes off. Passengers' voices can be heard through the cockpit door. The captain asks for a crowbar - the one that was initially confused with a hatchet. Knocking on the door and metallic sounds are heard. The pilot tries to bend the door with a crowbar.

At 10:37 the second alarm goes off and Lubitz does not respond. The captain yells at the co-pilot and obscene language can be heard.

10:38 Lubitz put on his oxygen mask. He's breathing normally. Airplane at 13,000 feet (4,000 meters).

10:40 An alarm is heard, banging outside and screams inside. The plane crashes into the mountains at an altitude of 5,000 feet (1,500 meters) at a speed of 800 km/h.

Both recordings support the investigators' version that Lubitz deliberately closed the door to the cockpit and sent the plane up the mountain.

Earlier it became known that the operation to search and collect the remains of victims of the Germanwings A320 plane crash in the French Alps has been completed. Identification of the dead will be completed by the end of the week.

Russian passenger plane on February 11. All 65 passengers and six crew members were killed. Rescuers reported that the debris was scattered over 30 hectares, but they were found relatively quickly. the site figured out what a black box is, what it looks like and what it is needed for

What is a black box?

The black box is the name given to the flight recorder on an airplane. It records instrument readings, pilot conversations and sounds in the cabin. Black box data is used to analyze crew actions, aircraft performance, and air crash investigations.

Why is a recorder called a black box?

Few people know, but the so-called black box is orange or red. The recorder is specially painted in bright colors to make it easier to find after a plane crash. For the same reason, the box is made not square, but cylindrical, in order to minimize physical damage upon contact with a hard surface.

The black box got its name thanks to its creators. In 1939, two Frenchmen, Usseno and Baudouin, presented the first model of a recorder. The data was recorded using a thin beam of light and ordinary photographic film. The designers painted the box black so as not to expose the film. In the middle of the last century, recorders were not a mandatory attribute of airliners. In 1957, the black box was replaced by an orange cylinder.

How many recorders are on the plane?

Until 1957, black boxes only recorded instrument readings. But after the still-unsolved crash in 1953 of the world's first British jet passenger airliner, Comet 1, in which 35 people were killed, Australian scientist David Warren came to the idea that conversations between the pilots could help the investigation. Four years later, he presented to the world his recorder, capable of recording both instrument parameters and crew conversations.

Today there are two types of black boxes: operational and emergency. The first transmits readings to the control room on the ground. The second records all information cyclically - the data is rewritten every two hours. It is installed in the tail section of the aircraft, because according to statistics, the tail is less likely to be destroyed during a fall. To be on the safe side, there may be several recorders on the plane.

Why isn't the black box destroyed when it explodes?

The cylindrical body of the box is made of titanium or high-strength steel. Requirements for the technical characteristics of a recorder are growing in direct proportion to technological progress. In addition to the force of impact on the ground, the device must withstand 30 minutes of continuous burning and month-long storage under water at a depth of six kilometers.

What's inside the cylinder?

The electronic boards inside the case are installed on additional shock absorbers to minimize the consequences of a powerful impact on a hard surface. The microcircuits are protected by a heat-protective layer. The drive that records the data looks like a regular computer's hard drive.

An ultrasonic beacon is installed on the recorder, which facilitates searches under water. There are also light and radio beacons on the body. These devices have standard signal frequencies so as not to confuse them with other sources.

For autonomous operation of the beacons, batteries are installed. During the flight they do not work, and the recorder receives energy from the aircraft systems. The batteries are activated after a strong shock.

What parameters does the device record?

The first models of the box recorded only speed, height, direction, acceleration and time. Modern instruments record 256 parameters. Among them: air pressure, fuel consumption, helm stroke, engine speed, barometric altitude, etc.

How is data decrypted?

Contrary to popular belief, the recorder data is not encrypted with a complex code. The records are made in a form convenient for perception and further analysis. After all, the main purpose of the recorder is to assist in the investigation of plane crashes.
Often data is lost due to destruction. In this case, specialists restore lost memory. This process takes months of painstaking work.

Where else are black boxes used?

Recorders are installed on trains, water transport and cars. The operating principle of these boxes is no different from a similar device on an airplane. In railway terminology, a recorder is called a locomotive speedometer, in automobile terminology - an autometer.

When a plane crash occurs, great hopes are placed on deciphering the “black box.” We will tell you what a “black box” is and why it is so important to “read” it.

Why and when was it invented?

Australia is considered the birthplace of the first "black box". The credit for the invention is given to David Warren. In 1953, he worked on the team of the commission that investigated the causes of the crash of the first passenger jet airliner, Comet-2, and began to think that it would be nice to have a device on board every aircraft that could record all the processes occurring during the flight.

Four years later the first flight recorder was made. David put it together with colleagues at the Aeronautics Laboratory in Melbourne. A year later, the head of the British Aircraft Registration Agency became interested in the device. He invited Warren to England, where, with the help of other specialists, the “black box” was improved. Two years later, after a plane crash that occurred in the state of Queensland, “black boxes” were ordered to be carried on all Australian ships and they began to spread throughout the world.

Why is the box called "black"

It's trite, but true - the box, of course, is not black. And not a box. Many have seen him in pictures. Usually it is either an orange ball or an orange cylinder. There are two versions as to why the device is still called “black”. According to one thing, the first “black boxes” really were black boxes, and they began to be painted in bright colors later; according to another, the box was called “black” because it was inaccessible to anyone except narrow specialists. Even ground crews could not touch the flight recorder.

What is it made of?

Traditionally, the shell of black boxes is made of titanium alloys or alloyed iron. In any case, it is a high-strength, heat-resistant material. Although, it must be said that the main safety of “black boxes” is ensured not even by the material from which they are made, but by their location. Usually - in the tail or fin of the aircraft.

What is inside?

The “stuffing” of “black boxes” changed over time, but its essence remained the same. Inside the flight recorder there is a device that records changes occurring during the flight, technical parameters, and records conversations between pilots and air traffic controllers. In the first “black boxes”, parameters were recorded in ink on paper tape, there was no need to talk about quality, then rapid development began, photographic film began to be used, then wire. Today, data is typically recorded on magnetic and solid-state drives.

What loads can it withstand?

Black boxes are designed with critical loads in mind. They can withstand 3400 g, and static pressure of 2 tons for 5 minutes, water pressure at depths of up to 6000 meters.

A special topic is testing the strength of recorders. Science magazine provides a list of checks that black boxes undergo before use. A sample recorder is fired from an air cannon, beaten, crushed, kept in fire at a temperature of 1000 degrees Celsius, kept at low temperatures down to -70 degrees, immersed in salt water and process fluids (gasoline, kerosene, machine oils).

What do black boxes read?

Black boxes are constantly being improved. The first onboard readers recorded only five parameters (heading, altitude, speed, vertical acceleration, and time). They were recorded using a stylus on metal disposable foil. The last round of evolution of on-board readers dates back to 1990, when solid-state media began to be used for recording. Modern “black boxes” are capable of monitoring up to 256 parameters. NationalGeografic reports that the latest models of recorders can monitor the movement of all parts of the wing and landing systems.

Why are they searching for so long?

All flight recorders are equipped with radio beacons, as well as acoustic systems for searching under water, which are activated only in case of danger. However, we must admit that radio beacons are not the most reliable devices. If the “black box” ends up under rubble or at great depths, the signal is extinguished, which greatly complicates the search.

How to say it in English?

In English-language sources, a “black box” can be called differently: flight recorder, blackbox and flight data recorder.

Does it sink or not?

Another question that is especially relevant today: do “black boxes” sink? Almost all models of flight recorders sink. Usually, buoyancy is not specified in their parameters, but the parameter of being in sea water at a certain depth is specified. Thus, for the “black box” Bars-2M, information must be stored when in sea water at a depth of 1000 meters for 30 days.

How many “black boxes” are there on an airplane?

The number of recorders may vary on different types of aircraft. Typically this is an on-board storage device, which is used in everyday work, as well as a secure on-board storage device, which is the notorious “black box”. A separate unit contains a secure recorder of crew conversations and sounds in the cockpit. All technical parameters are recorded on the flight recorder relative to the time scale.

Are there any alternatives?

Still falling. It is logical to assume that “black boxes” are still not the most reliable devices in the world that can disrupt the sad statistics of plane crashes. Are there alternatives to them?

At the moment, there is no alternative to “black boxes”, but developments are constantly underway to improve recorders. In the near future, it is planned to transmit all flight recorder data in real time either to a satellite or to services at air bases.

In an interview with Newyorker, Steve Abdu, a Boeing 777 captain and partner at an aviation consulting firm, commented on the promise of such changes: "Sending black box data in real time would require expensive satellite communications, but you could send it at four to five minute intervals. Then it would reduce price and will increase the profitability of using the technology." Every day the number of satellites in Earth's orbit increases, so storing flight data on a “remote” device seems to be the most likely alternative to long searches and painstaking decryption of data.