Investigators recover black boxes from UPS plane crash, detail data recovery process — NTSB successfully extracts cockpit audio from charred remains

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has successfully recovered the black boxes — including the cockpit voice recorder (CVR) and flight data recorder (FDR) — of the ill-fated UPS Airlines Flight 2976, with the agency saying that it has fully pulled the cockpit audio from their charred remains. According to the NTSB’s YouTube briefing, it secured over 2 hours of digitally recorded audio, including the last 25 seconds of the flight during which the accident sequence occurred. Below are also images of the black boxes throughout the data forensics process.

“The cockpit voice recorder contained two hours and four minutes of what we consider good quality digital recorded audio. In reviewing that audio, the crew completed their standard checklists and briefings in preparation for the flight,” said NTSB Member Todd Inman, one of the five officials leading the investigative agency. He also added, “About 37 seconds after the crew called for takeoff thrust, a repeating bell was heard on the CVR, which persisted until the end of the recording 25 seconds later. During this time, the crew engaged in efforts to attempt to control the aircraft before the crash.”

The CVR and FDR are data recording devices mandated by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) for installation on all commercial aircraft. These are more popularly known as black boxes, although they are actually painted bright orange to make them easier to find in the debris field of any crash. Unfortunately, the recovered black boxes were severely charred black due to the intensity of the post-crash fire.

(Click 'See More' on the above tweet to see the embedded images of the black box.) These devices used magnetic tape when they were first introduced in the 1960s, but were eventually replaced by solid-state memory (SSDs) starting in the 1990s. This made them far more robust, allowing these units to safeguard the recorded data even in the most violent of events.

Once recovered, they assist the investigating body in determining the cause of the crash. The FDR records up to 25 hours of critical aircraft systems, and could include altitude, airspeed, heading, and over a thousand other parameters. In the meantime, CVRs record more than just the voices of the flight crew — instead, they capture everything audible in the cockpit, including aural warnings and other environmental sounds. These two devices have helped authorities solve mysteries time and again, allowing them to improve the entire aviation industry across the globe.

Even though the NTSB has already extracted UPS 2976’s CVR, it’s not releasing it to the public until the entire investigation is complete. Inman said that a team of experts on the MD-11, the model of the accident aircraft, will review the recording and output a transcript.

“Our role is not to speculate on the cause of why we’re here. We want to know what happened and why it happened — and the most important thing is to make sure that it doesn’t happen again,” says Inman. He then later said, “Now, this CVR transcript will be made public only when a majority of the other factual reports are placed in the NTSB public docket for this accident, and that will be several months from now.”

These black boxes are a marvel of engineering, especially considering how we often think of electronics as sensitive electronics. The FDR and CVR are designed to withstand 3,400Gs of impact force for 6.5 milliseconds, withstand 1,100 degrees Celsius for half an hour, and withstand 20,000 feet of underwater pressure. Nevertheless, we’re sometimes surprised by the survivability of memory drives, like the 512GB SanDisk SD card found undamaged in the Titan submersible’s wreckage.

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