Long-haul Airbus planes to be fitted with ejectable black boxes
Airbus planes will be fitted with ejectable technology so devices can be found faster
Long-haul Airbus A350 and A380 passengers jets will soon come equipped with ejectable black boxes that can float, making them easier to find in an air crash at sea, aviation sources said.
"At the end of last year Airbus got the green light from EASA (European Air Security Agency) to work on the necessary modifications to its planes in order to install these new black boxes in the rear of the planes," one of the sources said.
An EASA spokesman confirmed the agency was working on changing the necessary certification to allow Airbus to equip its planes with the new flight data and cockpit voice recorders. The technology, which has already been approved for military aircraft, has not been used in civil aviation because - up until a few years ago - air accidents mainly happened during take-off or landing. Black boxes are generally found easily on land.
But in recent years passenger jets have crashed into the ocean, raising the need for new technology to help find the black boxes.
These recorders are critical in air crash investigations as they provide information on plane operations and pilot conversations. Investigators say they help explain 90 per cent of crashes.
In 2009, an Air France jet travelling from Rio to Paris went down in the Atlantic with 228 people on board and the search for the black boxes at the bottom of the ocean took almost two years. Last March, a Malaysia Airlines plane disappeared over the Indian Ocean and its black boxes have still not been found.
