Comments In A Letter To The Board Concerning Recommendations On 'Black Box' Redesign

FAA Administrator Michael Huerta says that there is no legal reason or technological way for cockpit electronics to be made "tamper proof" in response to a recommendation made by the NTSB.

Bloomberg News reports the Huerta (pictured) sent a letter to the NTSB in response to a recommendation to redesign the cockpit voice and flight data recorders in the cockpits of airplanes. “There appears to be no safe way to ensure recorders cannot be intentionally disabled while keeping the airplane safe from electrical failure that could become hazardous,” Huerta wrote in the April 22 letter obtained by Bloomberg.

Huerta also said that there is "no compelling reason" to require airlines to add video recorders to the cockpits of airliners. He said such information would not help investigators in understanding the reason for accidents or intentional crashes such as the Germanwings crash.

In the letter, Huerta cited regulations that require airplanes to be designed in such a way that pilots can shut off electricity to systems in order to diagnose overheating and potential fires in flight. Such a scenario caused a Swissair flight to go down in 1998. The pilots detected smoke in the cockpit but could not cut the power to the in-flight entertainment system to diagnose the problem and contain the ensuing fire. The plane went down near Nova Scotia, resulting in the fatal injury of all 229 people on board. 

“The FAA does not want to introduce design requirements that could expose the airplane to system risks that can lead to cascading failure and fires,” Huerta said in the letter.

FMI: www.faa.gov, www.ntsb.gov