Federal accident investigators are calling for a crucial safety upgrade for aircraft in the wake of a recent incident involving the loss of key evidence. The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) is urging the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to mandate the retrofitting of cockpits with enhanced cockpit voice recorders (CVRs) that can capture up to 25 hours of audio. Currently, the standard requirement is for CVRs to record just two hours of audio.
The NTSB's recommendation comes after a door panel blowout on an Alaska Airlines flight over Oregon last month. Due to the limitations of the current CVR, crucial data from the incident was overwritten after just two hours of recording. The absence of this critical audio has impeded the investigators' ability to fully comprehend the challenges faced by the flight crew during the emergency.
