Mountain Explorer

Nonsense! They most certainly did recognize the severity at the time. From the copilot interview: "During taxi to the gate, he was distracted and shaken up. He realized that he almost landed on a taxiway and the result “could have been bad.” That's pretty clear!!

I believe they waited to report it because some combination of:
1) They were too tired (or otherwise impaired) to think straight
2) They needed more time to come up with a plausible excuse and make sure they got their story straight
3) They knew that there was very incriminating evidence on the CVR and they needed to make sure the plane flew it's morning flight before the CVR was pulled.

Now we'll never know the full truth about what was going on during that first approach

canadiancow

Your third point is wrong, because by the time they got to the gate, the CVR had been overwritten. The only thing everyone in this thread agrees on is that 30 minutes is too damn short. 30 days would be more reasonable. Regulations from the 70s on technology are just stupid. Yes, getting more than 30 minutes in a black box 40 years ago was hard. Today, I'd actually be more surprised if the 30 minute limit was physical than if it was something like "byte[] buffer = new byte[SOME_SIZE_THAT_CAN_HOLD_30_MINUTES]", specifically to adhere to the regulation, even if the physical storage medium has been drastically improved.

Silver Fox

So why, in this day and age, has the recording time never been increased or ever come up in a safety conversation? Or has it and has been swept aside?

KenHamer

Yes, they had the security cameras disabled.

KenHamer

I take it then that you are knowledgeable about the engineering that goes into particle accelerators, space craft, military weapons and defense systems, computer chips, and all other fields?

silver_halide

Admiral Ackbar

I don't have hundreds of lives in my hands when I work. The pilot unions don't want to change it for exactly the reason the breaker was pulled here/30 minute buffer overwrite: CYA

Privacy is a red herring.

longtimeflyin

Most of us don't carry 100+ people's lives in our hands every day we go to work. Heck lack of privacy is also the norm in the vast majority of certain jobs, such as in policing.

ridefar

It is actually the norm for almost every corporate job these days. Every email I send, every text message, the geolocation of my phone etc are all recorded and kept. Keyword logging is also performed. Heck, there is even the ability to record every voice conversation if the company wants to turn it on. And lets not even talk about network security tools which can reconstruct all IP communications (including email, IP calling, etc.) on a network from just the IP packets -- they literally just sit on the network, they don't need to use Exchange logging or any other such tool. Corporate privacy is a complete myth at any moderate to large sized company today. The fact that 1000 people came within 5m of dying and the pilots use privacy as an excuse is completely, well, inexcusable.

YEG_SE4Life

So what?

Mountain Explorer

No. You're wrong. We know for a fact from the copilot interview that "during taxi to the gate, he was distracted and shaken up. He realized that he almost landed on a taxiway and the result “could have been bad.”

Don't you think that they were likely discussing how that happened during taxi to the gate, while they were distracted and shaken up?

ChrisA330

Jagboi

They said as much. Again from the interview: "After he talked with NORCAL, he did a brief announcement to passengers to say that they had

Mountain Explorer

We'll never know, because they failed to pull the CVR. We'll never find out the truth. And that makes me very mad.

Since we can't know the facts, I can only give my opinion. And yes, my opinion is that, during taxi, these guys were likely discussing the fact that they had very nearly died a few moments ago and were likely talking about what happened and how.

But, once again, we'll never know, cause they didn't pull the CVR or immediately report the incident so that the plane could be pulled from service before its next flight

eigenvector

Leaving aside whether it's reasonable to record someone performing a safety critical function, there are very simple technological solutions. Just encrypt the recording with keys owned by the OEM or regulator (FAA, Transport Canada, etc), so that it is impossible for the airline to access them surreptitiously outside of a bona fide incident investigation.