For Immediate Release
July 20, 2005
Washington, D.C. - In a bipartisan effort to ensure investigators and homeland security officials have access to valuable information immediately following commercial airline accidents, yesterday 11 House members introduced H.R. 3336, the Safe Aviation Flight Enhancement (SAFE) Act of 2005.
"Our current black box standards have proven inadequate given the threats of terrorism to our transportation systems," said bill sponsor and former Aviation Subcommittee Chairman John J. Duncan, Jr. (R-Tenn.). "Post 9/11, we cannot afford to wait. We need to know immediately what happened in the event of an aviation disaster, and this legislation represents a simple solution to a serious problem by allowing commercial aviation to benefit from black box technology that has proven successful in our military."
The SAFE Act requires all new commercial aircraft to be equipped with a second, back up set of cockpit voice and digital flight data recorders (CVR and DFDR) that utilize deployable recorder technology, which separates from the aircraft at crash impact to avoid being entangled in the dangerous crash environment and floats indefinitely in the event of a water incident. This eliminates a major problem investigators face when trying to recover the recorders from the ocean depths. This new black box requirement would dramatically improve the ability of the investigators to recover undamaged recorders immediately following any air disaster so that quick and accurate determinations can be made about the potential of terrorism.
The introduction of the SAFE Act is in response to the Federal Aviation Administration's (FAA) recent Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) to improve black boxes on commercial aircraft, which proposed increases in the quantity of data collected but did not take into account the loss of recorders on 9/11 or the history of delays in recovering recorders from crash sites, particularly over water. The reality is that in the post 9/11 world an increased amount of recorded data can only prove valuable to investigators if the recorders survive the crash and are quickly recoverable.
"The black boxes are one of the first tools investigators look to for answers to determine why a crash occurred," said Jim Hall, former Chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB). "I was directly involved in several accident investigations such as TWA 800, Egypt Air 990, Swiss Air 111 and others where it took us seven days or more to recover the black boxes from the ocean. If similar delays occurred today, especially over the ocean, officials may shut down the airspace out of fear that it was a terrorist attack, when in fact it could be the result of a mechanical failure. Such uncertainty would have devastating long term affects on the aviation industry."
Both the TSA and the FAA have acknowledged the potential security benefits of the deployable recorder technology as a redundant system. The bipartisan sponsors of the SAFE Act have addressed a letter to FAA Administrator Marion Blakey requesting that the agency address the provisions within the SAFE Act before moving forward with their proposed recorder regulations.
The SAFE Act is being endorsed by representatives from major airline disasters such as the National Air Disaster Alliance/ Foundation as well as TWA 800 and 9/11 victim advocates.
"Relying on the performance of one recorder system that goes down with the plane, particularly in the post 9/11 environment we live in, is grossly insufficient." said Gail Dunham, President of the aviation disaster victims group National Air Disaster Alliance/ Foundation. "The SAFE Act will ensure the American public will have timely and accurate answers they deserve in the event of another aviation disaster."
[cosponsors: Rep. Richard Baker (R-La.); Rep. Bart Gordon (D-Tenn.); Rep. Harold Rogers (R-Ky.); Rep. Lee Terry (R-Neb.); Rep. Bob Etheridge (D-N.C.); Rep. Harold Ford, Jr. (D-Tenn.); Rep. John Boozman (R-Ark.); Rep. David Price (D-N.C.); Rep. Michael Capuano (D-Mass.); and Rep. Bill Pascrell, Jr. (D-N.J.)]
