The sudden death of Kobe Bryant, a basketball player along with his 13 year old daughter, Gianna Bryant and seven others has shocked the world. However it will take months before finishing the investigation of what caused the crash of the helicopter they were riding. An article written by two authors, Ian Duncan and Luz Lazo, just recently (January 29, 2020) posted something on The Washington Post related to this tragedy. Turns out it does not have a black box which makes it harder to investigate. The authors then researched National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) and Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to get some answers regarding this issue.
Tilley, C. (2015) A 'black box' is made up of two separate pieces of equipment: the flight data recorder (FDR) and a cockpit voice recorder (CVR). They are compulsory on any commercial flight or corporate jet, and are usually kept in the tail of an aircraft, where they are more likely to survive a crash. It records audio and video data and built to withstand a crash. Its main purpose is to help investigators identify the cause of an aircraft accidents easily. The National Transportation Safety Board is an independent Federal agency is in charge with investigating every road, highway, sky, and other mode of transportation accidents in the United States. The NTSB's goal is to prevent future accidents by finding the cause of all accidents and advising other for safety. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is the agency of the United States Department of Transportation responsible for the regulation and of civil aviation. They also develop new technologies to improve air traffic control. Its primary mission is to ensure safety of civil aviation. Both working together to improve flights for all aircraft. The authors used their data because it is a reliable source and they worked directly for investigating Kobe Bryant's helicopter crash.
The authors provided evidence that lack of black box or recorder in aircrafts can make accidents harder to investigate. They quoted what Jennifer Homendy, the lead investigator of NTSB said regarding the incident that resulted in the death of Kobe Bryant. Directly quoting what the member of the board said during the news conference, “Had the helicopter been equipped with voice and data recorders, that would have helped us significantly in this investigation.” The authors then reviewed and gathered data from NTSB regarding aircraft crashes from previous years. They found out that 159 out of 185 crashes, the aircrafts do not have a black box installed. This made 18 of those cases never fully investigated. 18 out of 159 cases might not be a lot but this shows that black boxes and recorders are important. They also got information based from reports of NTSB about a helicopter crash in the Gulf of Mexico. They quoted what the board wrote to prove that black boxes are essential. The investigators were struggling to find the cause of the crash. All they know is the bad weather is one of the cause, but without a recorded audio and video data they are stuck with the wreckage and witnesses.
The statement of FAA, “to justify a recorder mandate because the benefits of recorders are difficult to identify and quantify because the absence of a recorder will never cause an accident.” Is not quite true. Now that we know the black box can help speed up investigations of aircraft crashes, we can go back to these organization's missions. Both NTSB and FAA's responsibility is to investigate aviation accidents. Therefore, black box will never cause an accident but it can help prevent accidents by speeding up the investigation when something happens and we can avoid it the next time.
The conclusion of the article is about how installing black boxes in helicopters are really important in every flight and the lack of safety technology. Black box is really important for us to have a communication with the air controllers, and for us to investigate the things easier and faster. There is one thing too that is missing which is the 'Terrain Avoidance Warning System'. We must observe our transportation first before we go to our destination. Black box is really important for the helicopters for the investigator investigate it easily without hesitation. The administration said that even without the thing called black box, the helicopter will still remain safe. People should not blame the helicopter pilot just because he forced the helicopter to fly higher. All we need to do is to get another lesson from this type of accident cases. We must always check things before taking a ride from different types of transportation. People The news is sad and the whole world were shocked from this case. People must be grateful for every blessing that we have every time we go outside. People do not know what will happen in the future. Every second is a blessing.