Testing continues for deployable flight data recorders

Airbus’s first A350-1000 test aircraft has been recruited to support development of an innovative flight recorder that can be jettisoned automatically in the event of an accident. The aircraft, MSN59, has been modified to accommodate a mechanical prototype and, as a result of the initial installation, is the preferential candidate to serve as the platform for future functional testing. These tests would amount to the most radical advancement in civil flight-recorder evolution since the emergence of solid-state technology more than two decades ago, and provide a potential solution to one of the most frustrating aspects of accident investigation. When Air France flight AF447 disappeared over the South Atlantic in June 2009, the loss of the Airbus A330 resulted in an extraordinary 700-day undersea hunt for its two flight recorders. After losing contact in the Atlantico flight information region while en route to Paris, the aircraft had descended from cruise altitude and struck the ocean surface, sinking to a depth of almost 4,000m. Analysis of timing and the flightpath enabled the search to focus on a circle – albeit one that was 148km in diameter, a total area half the size of Belgium. Several attempts to locate AF447’s wreckage prior to April 2011 had proven unsuccessful – and this meant that, for nearly two years, the most evocative image of the hunt was that of the A330’s vertical fin being hauled onto a recovery vessel. French investigation authority BEA says the inquiry underlined that the information retrieved from the flight recorders was instrumental in determining the circumstances of the accident. <br/>