BLACK box flight recorders are key to finding out the cause of an air crash, but they are sometimes blank. Now there is a fix.
Flight recorders are powered by three circuits, each tripping to the next if one cuts out. But recording stops if all power is lost. This happened in 1998, when an MD-11 airliner crashed after a fire burned through its wiring. Investigators found recordings of the flight’s final 5 minutes were missing.
The International Civil Aviation Organization then recommended that flight recorders should have back-up batteries by 2004. But technical issues slowed its plan.
It is…
