- 6/29/2025
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00:00The black boxes, that is both the CVR, the cockpit voice recorder, and what is called the TFR, both have been recovered.
00:10Walking around the clock to analyze critical data retrieved from the black boxes of Air India flight AI-171.
00:17Began extracting data from the plane's black boxes on 24th June.
00:21Now, this black box does hold a significant case, in fact, a lot many answers as to what led to the crash of Flight AI-171.
00:32Why is it taking so long to get the information from the black boxes on Air India-171?
00:37Well, we're going to explore that question in this video, and we're going to come up with an answer.
00:42It's more nuanced than you think.
00:44Now, Air India-171 was the aircraft that crashed the 787 in Ahmadabad.
00:51About two weeks ago, and they have retrieved the black boxes, and there's a misnomer there because they're not actually black.
00:57They're actually bright orange to make them easy to retrieve, but they've retrieved the black boxes, and there are three things that we think of as the black boxes.
01:06There are two flight data recorders, one in the nose of the airplane, one in the tail of the airplane, and then the cockpit voice recorder, which is a third device.
01:15The cockpit voice recorder records the last two hours of sound from the cockpit.
01:21It's not just the voices of the pilots.
01:23It's any sound, so you can retrieve things clicking and moving also, and it retrieves just two hours.
01:30Last year, the FAA in the United States passed a bill authorizing a 24-hour cockpit voice recorder,
01:38so going forward, all U.S.-built aircraft are going to have to record for 24 hours, but right now, two hours is the standard.
01:46The other two black boxes record between 17 and 24 hours of data, and it's all sorts of data from the airplane.
01:54It's anything you can imagine.
01:55It's the engine parameters.
01:57It's the altitude.
01:57It's the airspeed.
01:58It's what position switches are in, whether the flaps are up or down.
02:02Virtually anything you can think of is contained in those 88 different data points that the flight data recorder records.
02:10Now, many airlines and manufacturers are requiring more than 88 points.
02:16Those 88 points are mandated by ICAO, which is the International Civil Aviation Organization, as a minimum.
02:23So, what's the difference between 17 hours and 24 hours of recording?
02:28Well, it's just how many data points you record.
02:31If you record more than the 88, you're going to get a little bit less time before it records over itself again.
02:37Generally speaking, if you get 150 data points, it might take the 17 hours rather than the 24 hours.
02:43So, both of the black boxes, the flight data recorders, and the cockpit voice recorder have been retrieved from Air India 171.
02:51The forward one was retrieved the day after the crash, and the rear one was retrieved, I think, three or four days afterwards.
02:58Where are those black boxes today?
03:00They've been moved from Ahmadabad to Delhi, India.
03:04That's where they are today.
03:05Now, why is it taking so long?
03:08Well, let me explain a little bit about what the flight data recorder does and doesn't do, a little bit of the history behind it.
03:14It's actually fascinating.
03:15And then we'll delve into the interpretation process and how difficult it is actually to get the information out in a timely manner.
03:24And I think once we get done with this, you'll completely understand why it's taking so long and why it might take even longer.
03:31So, the black box has an interesting history.
03:34It goes back all the way to World War II.
03:35So, British aircraft, war aircraft in World War II, were collecting secret information, and the British just dubbed it the black box.
03:45And it probably back then was a black box, but it was black because it was secret.
03:49And so, that expression became known for virtually every black box that an airplane carries.
03:54The very first airliner to carry a black box, a flight data recorder, was in 1941, and it only recorded two bits of information.
04:04It recorded the altitude of the airplane and whether the radio was on or off.
04:08So, we've come a long way since those days.
04:12And that 88 bits of data that it records is very comprehensive.
04:16And again, there's flight data recorders that record much more than that.
04:19But it goes all the way back to pre, actually the beginning of World War II with flight data recorders.
04:25Now, these flight data recorders have been moved to Delhi.
04:30Does it complicate things?
04:32Not really.
04:33But in a sense, the flight data recorders are interesting devices because they're designed to withstand 3,400 Gs of impact.
04:44That's a lot of Gs.
04:45And so, they're designed to withstand any impact, any crash that any airplane can experience.
04:51And of course, they've got one in the front and one in the back.
04:53They record the exact same data in case the one is destroyed.
04:56Perhaps the other one will be good.
04:57They've retrieved both, and both of them are good, but they are damaged.
05:01Now, if you've got a flight data recorder that's not damaged at all, you can simply plug a cord into it, hook it up to a laptop, and retrieve the data.
05:09It gets much more complicated when they're damaged.
05:11And so, clearly with these, they couldn't just plug into them and retrieve the data.
05:15So, now you've got to get the box physically out of the airplane, and it might mean welding it out or cutting it out.
05:21And then you've got to take that thing, and you've got to get it someplace where somebody can interpret it.
05:25It's been moved to Delhi, and there are basically three agencies involved here, actually four.
05:31There's Boeing Corporation, there's the USNTSB, and there's the AAIB, which is the Aviation Authority over in India.
05:38AAIB is in charge of this.
05:40They're the ones that have possession of the boxes, and so they're leading the investigation with the assistance of Boeing, NTSB, and the manufacturer of the, that's the fourth entity of the black boxes.
05:51All of them are getting together.
05:53So, now it gets complicated because all of those people have to come over to Delhi.
05:57They have to reposition.
05:57And when you go to get into a black box to retrieve the data on a damaged black box, you can't just open the lid to it or unscrew the end of it.
06:06It doesn't work like that.
06:07It's a completely sealed device.
06:11And so, you've got to now cut into it, all right?
06:15So, now cutting into it is a delicate process because you don't want to further damage anything that's on the inside.
06:20So, you have to have the right precision equipment to do that.
06:24That's got to get sent over there.
06:26Now, you've got to assess the equipment on the inside of the flight data recorder.
06:32There's a motherboard in there, and if that motherboard is intact, it might need some cleaning up.
06:37You're going to remove that motherboard, and then you've got to take the data off that motherboard, and you've got to basically put it into a good flight data recorder.
06:47That process takes time because you don't want to lose any of the data.
06:51You don't want to erase it or compromise it, and you want to make sure you've got a clean transfer of data into that good flight data recorder.
06:58So, once the motherboard is retrieved from the damaged flight data recorder and the information off of that motherboard is transferred to the good flight data recorder,
07:06you can begin the interpretation process, and that takes some time.
07:10So, we'll put a pin in that for a minute because it's complicated in how it gets interpreted.
07:15Now, let's take a look at some of the things that the flight data recorder does or doesn't do based on the various theories that we have so far in what brought Air India 171 down.
07:27The basic theories are this, a total electrical failure, total hydraulic failure, or a dual engine failure, or a combination of all three at this point.
07:35We know that because we got confirmation.
07:37We've got that from major media sources now that the RAT was deployed.
07:41And one of those three things, or all three of those things, will deploy the RAT.
07:46Now, the question is, what if it was a total electrical failure?
07:49Would the flight data recorders just stop recording, and maybe we don't have any information from that point forward?
07:55Well, they've thought of everything, and in the flight data recorder is something called RIPs, R-I-P-S, and it's a recorder internal power source.
08:02It's own internal battery, and it runs for 10 minutes, and it's just in case there is a total electrical failure, the flight data recorders continue to gather information.
08:13Now, this flight was a very short flight.
08:15It only lasted about 60 seconds, so I'm sure that the data they got was for the entire duration of the flight, basically because of those internal batteries inside those flight data recorders.
08:26Now, if it wasn't a total electrical failure, it was a dual engine failure, all of that information happened rather quickly, and many of you are saying, well, it was such a short flight, why is it taking so long to get the information?
08:38Well, it's precisely because it was such a short flight that it's going to take a longer time to get the information.
08:45Let me explain.
08:45I was once in an incident in a 767.
08:50We were going into Milan, and we started our initial descent.
08:54We were at about 35,000 feet, and a bus on the aircraft, and the electrical system has things called buses, and they're just basically metal bars that have all the electronics attached to them.
09:04It's very difficult to lose a bus, but we fried a bus, and I'm not sure exactly why the bus fried.
09:11All I know was that the cockpit lit up like a Christmas tree.
09:14Every single light you could imagine came up on my screens.
09:17They were red.
09:18They were green.
09:18They were yellow, and there was page after page.
09:21There was no way of telling what the initial problem was or what the secondary problems were because of all of the pages of lights.
09:28All I knew was the aircraft was very difficult to control because one of the lights was a yaw damper.
09:33You can feel that.
09:34An airliner needs the yaw dampers to work, and it was a real bear to fly, but it was still flyable.
09:39We got it down on the ground safely.
09:41That's exactly what happened in this black box, except probably on steroids.
09:47So in a short, less than 60-second flight, something catastrophic happened, maybe several catastrophic things happened, almost simultaneously, so that this airplane began to lose lift.
10:00In the cockpit, you would have seen every light come up on the screen probably instantaneously.
10:05That same dynamic is taking place in the flight data recorders.
10:09All of this information almost simultaneously happens, and it's all recorded in the flight data recorder.
10:16Now, the flight data recorder is going to capture all of it, right?
10:18So all that data is there, but since it happens so close to one another, it's almost like a tangled ball of yarn.
10:26It can be straightened out, it can be undone, but it's much more complicated than a long string of yarn that has a couple of knots in it.
10:34And most incidents take place over time, 8, 10, 15 minutes, where you've got an initial incident, it leads to a secondary one, maybe a third one, and you can unknot all those little things along this timeline.
10:46This one happened all at once, so now that makes the interpretation process that much more complicated.
10:52They'll have all the data they need, but it's all happening instantaneously, and it may be difficult for them to look at it and say, well, this happened first, this happened second, this is what caused this.
11:04Again, it was such a short flight that the interpretation process is probably going to get bogged down.
11:10That's why it's taken so long up to this point, and it may take much longer for them to do it and to do it properly.
11:16If I'm leading that investigation, I want to make sure that we get the proper answers, the correct answers, before we go to the public with it.
11:23I don't want to come out with a quick answer, and then a few days or a few weeks later have to come back and retract all of that and say, well, it actually wasn't that, it was this.
11:32So it could be any number of things.
11:34The door is wide open still.
11:35The popular leading theories are total electrical failure, total hydraulic failure, some sort of dual engine failure.
11:42There is the fuel contamination theory.
11:44There is the vapor lock theory.
11:47There's the FADEC theory.
11:48All of those are wide open.
11:51I saw a video, and the engineer had done a formula on what the odds were.
11:56Two and a half billion to one is a dual engine failure on a 787 right after takeoff.
12:02That's what we know happened, or something similar to that happened where they lost lift.
12:06That's high odds, my friends.
12:09You have a higher probability of getting struck by lightning or winning the Powerball lottery than you do this ever happening again.
12:15So is it safe to fly?
12:16Absolutely.
12:17I think whatever happened on this airplane was a one-off.
12:20I don't think it'll ever happen again.
12:23So it's over in Delhi, the black box.
12:26They've got the teams in place.
12:28I have read reports that said that they do have the motherboard retrieved.
12:32They've retrieved the data.
12:33It was in good shape.
12:34They've transferred the data.
12:36I'm saying right now, I believe they're in the interpretation process, and that interpretation process is very much like that knotted ball of yarn.
12:44The interpreters have probably never seen anything quite like this before because we haven't seen anything quite like this before, and it's going to take them some time to unknot that knotted ball of yarn.
12:55Once they get it unknoted, I'm sure we're going to have a public pronouncement of what they think was the cause behind this crash.
13:03And that's the update on Arian Neo 171.
13:07Now you know.
13:08I'm Captain Steve.
13:10Fly safe.
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