Washington: US officials want to install video cameras in cockpits and monitor "black box" voice recorders to try to eliminate pilot distractions and banter which have been blamed for several accidents, including a deadly crash in New York.
"It is essential to understand what is going on in the cockpit if we are to achieve further reductions" in the number of accidents involving commercial aircraft, Debbie Hersman, chair of the NTSB, said in a statement yesterday.
"The benefits attained from the cockpit voice recorder should not be limited to posthumous investigations," she said.
The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) recommendation came in the agency`s report, released this month, into the crash near Buffalo, New York of a Continental Airlines commuter plane last year, which killed 49 people on board the plane and one on the ground.
The black box on that flight showed that the pilot and co-pilot "began a conversation that was unrelated to their flying duties" when the aircraft was below 3,000 metres as it approached Buffalo International airport, the report showed.
Federal Aviation Administration and airline policy rules prohibit non-essential talks when flying below 3,000 metres.
Last week in a separate report, the NTSB called for crash-proof image recorders to be installed in the cockpits of large commercial airliners and small passenger aircraft.
Having image recorders in cockpits would "greatly assist" the NTSB in probing plane crashes, as the devices would capture "the actions of the pilots and show the weather conditions that they were dealing with," said Ted Lopatkiewicz, director of public affairs for the NTSB.
PTI
