Secrets of the black box

Everything you need to know about the devices that help air-crash investigators determine what went wrong

Black box
(Image credit: (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak))

What is a black box?

It's a device that helps air-crash investigators determine what went wrong, by providing a detailed record of a plane's final hours. Passenger jets normally carry two of these shoebox-size containers — one holding a voice recorder, which captures pilots' conversations and other cockpit noise, and another housing a data recorder, which logs the plane's speed, altitude, direction, fuel flow, hydraulic pressure, and hundreds of other metrics. These steel-and-titanium black boxes — which, despite their name, are actually painted orange to make them easier to spot — are fire resistant, waterproof, and engineered to survive being smashed into the ground at over 300 mph. Most flight recorders are stored in the tail section of the aircraft, which is usually the last point of impact in a crash.

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