why do airplanes....?

Question

why do airplane cockpits not have built in cameras which are connected to the black box so in case of terrorism reports or hi-jacking they can see who did it how they did it so why isnt this in progress?

Answer 1

because then president ***** cant lie and blame muslims for everything

Answer 2

The primary reason would be storage space. The cockpit voice recorder only retains the most recent 30 minutes of data on the older mechanical units or 2 hours on the new digital units. Recording video would cut that to 3 or 12 minutes and that would be at a very low resolution.

A video stream would provide little if any valuable information in determining the cause of an aircraft crash.

Identifying terrorists in the cockpit would be meaningless; we already have pictures of all of the 9/11 terrorists without a single cockpit video recording. Why waste the money on something that would be sensationalized by the media on the 6:00 news?

What's more, the odds of any given flight being hijacked are infinitesimally small. If we repeated 9/11 every month, the odds of being on that specific plane for someone who flew once a month would be less than 1 in half a million. Stretching that to 5 years and the 4 airliners that were destroyed on that day, the odds are on the order of 1 in 7.5 million.

For comparison's sake, the chance of your being killed in a car crash are 1 in 7,000 on any given trip. The chance of being killed by a drunk driver are about 1 in 10,000 on any given trip, but we don't have video recorders in cars where they'd statistically be far more valuable.

Answer 3

I agree with most of the other answers about storage space.The one thing that I thought of though is why not have the cameras link to a HF transmitter that actively transmits the video to a central control data that has the capacity to retain not minutes but hours of images. It could also be tied in to the same circuit as the black boxes as a back up,because there has been crashes where the black boxes info was incomplete and or never found.
The airlines could also use this data to improve their efficiency in pilot training and flight planning.

Answer 4

I dont think most pilots would be too keen on having themselves video taped to make sure the are doing their job properly. How would you feel if someone mounted a camera over your head to monitor your performance? Every time you check your email at work someone would know. Every time to go to the bathroom someone would know. Every time you pick your nose someone would know. We don't need cameras in the cockpit and we certainly dont need people watching over our shoulders to make sure we are doing everything right.

Cameras wouldn't prevent any hijackings from happening. Hijackers typically want or even need attention to draw media coverage for their cause. A camera would give them even more coverage. Not to mention that the billions spent on installing them could be spent installing the explosives detection machines at airposts that still dont exist. Many many other uses for the money that would be far more effective

Answer 5

Some pilots don't like the way they look on camera. Some are camera shy. And whoever up there said that the camera would not be able to withstand the impact, it wouldn't matter because all the recorded video would be in the black box which can withstand the impact.

Answer 6

The storage space for video would be limited, so it would have to overwrite every 90min or so. This is what Cockpit Voice Recorders do, since they are usually stopped by the force of impact (but not always).

So for a video camera, all they would have to do is locate it and put a piece of duct tape over it.

I have seen security cameras on an executive 737.

http://www.airliners.net/open.file?id=0278421&WxsIERv=Obrvat%20737-53N&Wm=0&WdsYXMg=Hagvgyrq&QtODMg=Ivpgbevn%20-%20Vagreangvbany%20%28LLW%20%2F%20PLLW%29&ERDLTkt=Pnanqn%20-%20Oevgvfu%20Pbyhzovn&ktODMp=Frcgrzore%2018%2C%202002&BP=0&WNEb25u=Ybera%20Oenwxbivp&xsIERvdWdsY=C4-CUF&MgTUQtODMgKE=V%20ybir%20guvf%20fpurzr%21%20Gur%20puebzr%20naq%20yvarf%20ner%20terng%21&YXMgTUQtODMgKERD=1264&NEb25uZWxs=2002-09-29%2000%3A00%3A00&ODJ9dvCE=&O89Dcjdg=24970%2F1977&static=yes&width=1024&height=780&sok=JURER%20%20%28nvepensg_trarevp%20%3D%20%27Obrvat%20737-300%27%20BE%20nvepensg_trarevp%20%3D%20%27Obrvat%20737-400%27%20BE%20nvepensg_trarevp%20%3D%20%27Obrvat%20737-500%27%29%20NAQ%20%28cynpr%20%3D%20%27Ivpgbevn%20-%20Vagreangvbany%20%28LLW%20%2F%20PLLW%29%27%29%20%20BEQRE%20OL%20cubgb_vq%20QRFP&photo_nr=2&prev_id=0841762&next_id=NEXTID&size=L

They were very small and well hidden in the cabin (they look like little peepholes) so the technology is there, the practical use isn't.

Answer 7

When the terrorists are already on the plane, what difference does it make how they did things on the airplane ?

By the way: the black box (or flight recorder, in fact, orange-colored) records data regarding the flight itself (speed, altitude, dirction, instrument recordings, diagnostic messages, radio communication), not what's happening with the passengers. Video data is very storage space-intensive, which would reqiure a complete re-design of existing flight recorders.

Answer 8

You probably wont believe the complexity of the real answer to such a simple, logical question, but it all revolves around FAA approval for safety issues and with that, causes major expenditures within the industry, which will be passed on to the passengers, etc. Sounds insane perhaps, but it is necessary for safety concerns to the fliers. An example to this is the fiasco caused by a crash of an airliner due to the installation of TV's for the passengers. an electrical overload caused an inflight fire with the resultant damage to flight instruments and controls. I seem to remember that it was Air Swiss, but that may have been another instance of inflight fire. in any event, the cost to retrofit their aircraft to fly in the US caused them to go out of business.

Answer 9

dont know but i would have thought the cockpit could be airlocked with a camera so pilots can see whats going on with passengers and should such an emergency arise the pilots could push a button to emit fast acting sleeping gas on all on board till they land the plane. or is that a stupid answere?

Answer 10

Cameras at this time are too delicate to withstand the forces of impact. The inflight recorder is built of sturdier stuff.

Answer 11

Well ! I dont think that is going to help cause that will be really late to do any thing to prevent it and it wont help in future tragidies of this sort. Insted i suggest the govt. to be more responsible in their policies so as to prevent any bad work that affects the people of the country or humans at large.