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Comment by tetrep | Hacker News Reader

> Cockpit voice recorder (CVR) information was not available for this incident because the data were overwritten before senior Air Canada officials became aware of the severity of this incident.

How long are recordings normally kept? I would assume at least a few days for mundane flights (storage is cheap, isn't it?) but any sort of incident similar to this I would assume they keep recordings for much longer, if only for internal purposes.

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It's a loop recorder. When that aircraft was certified, only a 30 minute loop was required. If that aircraft was newly certified, it would now require a 2 hour loop.

Can they not sync the recording elsewhere once they land and every passenger has a high-bandwidth internet connection the second the wheels are on the ground? (Is it too hard to certify that a system that connects to the internet is safe?)

I think it's a matter of privacy rather than capability. The airlines unions don't want their conversations to be easily accessible.

The tower recordings are posted above.

>(storage is cheap, isn't it?)

Not on ancient planes where everything needs a billion certifications from all sorts of regulatory bodies.

There's other issues at play. Pilots hate the idea of more monitoring of the cockpit, and have been vocal in trying to prevent e.g. a video recording of the cockpit being part of the "black box", even though it would have helped to shed light on a lot of aviation incidents[1].

1. https://www.wired.com/2014/07/malaysia-370-cockpit-camera/

It also needs to survive a couple of years at the bottom of the ocean or a similarly extreme environment and still be readable afterwards.

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