If the airplane landed, could the "Black box" be removed and destroyed?

[Renew Deal]

The hope seems to be that if the plane is found and the black box is found, we will find out what happened. But if the plane lands, could the black box be removed? That could mean that if the plane is found in tact, we may never know what happened.

Another scary scenario... Could the plane fly without the black box installed? Could it have been removed in advance?

[Gravitycollapse]

1. I can't be certain but my assumption is it cannot be removed by conventional means.

In other words, a screw driver and a couple hours won't get it out. It is probably nested deep inside the aircraft.

[backscatter712]

6. That probably means they'll use a Sawzall & just hack the thing out.

If they're not worried about damaging the aircraft, getting the black box recorders out is easy.

[Mojo Electro]

2. It could be destroyed, yes.

It's built very robust to survive crashes, but it could be deliberately disassembled and the data destroyed. The NTSB opens them up to retrieve the recording.

I see no reason why a plane couldn't fly without one, but I don't know how easy they are to remove. I believe they are in the tail. You could maybe pull the circuit breakers that power them so they wouldn't work.

Another thing is that the cockpit voice recorder usually only has about a 2 or 3 hour loop, after which it begins to overwrite previous data, so if the plane flew for many hours, the CVR data would not contain the recording of the start of the incident.

[PlanetaryOrbit]

10. I wonder why it can't record dozens or hundreds of hours' worth.

Surely storage memory isn't that hard?

[Mojo Electro]

13. They haven't changed much

over the years. I believe they still use magnetic tape.

Ideally both the CVR and the flight data recorder would constantly stream data via satellite to somewhere it could be stored and reviewed, at least until the flight landed safely. Or at least maybe you could have the FDR send a burst of data every 10 minutes or so that is the record of all the data recorded by the FDR, things like altitude, airspeed, throttle and control surface position, etc. Doesn't seem like that would take much bandwidth, and it would eliminate not having the data when the recorder goes to the bottom of the sea or for whatever reason can't be retreived. To have the cockpit voice recorder stream constantly might not work, but it would be nice to retrieve the data via satellite. I'm not sure why some of these things haven't been implemented, maybe somebody can shed some light on that.

For the record, I think it is pretty rare that the recorders are never found.

There was a segment on the show "How It's Made" featuring the flight recorders.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

3. There are two "black boxes," which are actually orange.

There is a flight data recorder, which digitally records everything the airplane is doing, and the cockpit voice recorder, which records all the conversations and sounds in the flight deck. They are installed in the very back end of the airplane, where they are most likely not to be destroyed in a crash, and are wrapped in crush-proof and fire-proof materials. They can be removed by normal means (though probably you need more than a screwdriver) because they periodically need servicing.

[JimDandy]

11. Is it true that the black boxes can be switched off by the pilot

and that they record only 2 hours worth of data? A British newspaper stated that all the data that might have been recorded around the time of last contact with the plane would have been overwritten during the hours after it changed course.

eta: #7 already posted that the pilot can disable them by pulling their circuit breakers.

[OldTime]

4. Sure it could

It will be located toward the tail of the aircraft and will be reasonably easy to access. Other than being painted bright orange it is just another, albeit very strong and well packaged, piece of electrical gear in the aircraft.

I think that it could fly without the black box but that would almost guarantee that both the pilot and co-pilot were in on it since I would lay a large wager that it is on one or more of the pre-flight checklists.

[Renew Deal]

5. If they were removed it means that more than the pilots would be involved

Someone else would probably have to remove them.

[FarCenter]

7. In the pilot suicide of SilkAir Flight 185, the pilot disabled the black boxes.

Approximately 73% of the wreckage (by weight) was recovered, partially reconstructed and examined. Both "black boxes" — the cockpit voice recorder (CVR) and flight data recorder (FDR) — were successfully retrieved from the river and their data was extracted and analyzed.

According to the Canadian television series Mayday, at 16:00 the CVR shows that Captain Tsu left the cockpit; 5 seconds later, the CVR stopped recording. Tests indicated that a click would clearly be heard on the CVR recording if the CVR circuit breaker had tripped normally but not if it had been pulled out manually. As there was no click, it was speculated that Captain Tsu may have pulled out the CVR circuit breaker before leaving the cockpit. NTSC and NTSB investigators postulated that if Captain Tsu was responsible for the crash, he returned to his seat and then concocted a pretense for First Officer Ward to leave the cockpit before pulling the FDR circuit breaker which would have been noticed by Ward had he remained as disconnection would have triggered warning lights on the console.[10] Several minutes later, as recorded by Indonesian ground radar, the aircraft entered a rapid descent, disintegrated and crashed into the Musi River.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SilkAir_Flight_185

This would have been well known to whoever hijacked or suicide Malaysia 370, and one would expect that the CVR and FDR would both have been disabled shortly after the other systems were shut down.

[Renew Deal]

8. Interesting

Thanks

[FarCenter]

9. Other pilot suicides --

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EgyptAir_Flight_990
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LAM_Mozambique_Airlines_Flight_470
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Air_Maroc_Flight_630

[Hassin Bin Sober]

15. I remember that FedEx pilot that tried to kill the pilots and bring down the plane

...tried two or three times to disable the CVR.

The attempted killer was flying in the jumpseat as a passenger. He arrived early and pulled the fuses. The duty pilot or F/O pushed them back in. I think the killer tried it twice.

The perp's plan was to beat the pilots unconscious with a golf club so the injuries would be consistent with a crash.

Debt and insurance money was the motive.

[Historic NY]

12. It it takes to the air again it will be destroyed...