Airplane cockpits need a camera's oversight: Column

An airliner takes off for a foreign destination filled with travelers either excited about vacations they've planned for years or eager to get home with their memories. Soon after, the first officer takes advantage of being alone in the cockpit and sends the plane plunging to earth. All aboard die.

This is the familiar scenario of the Germanwings tragedy that riveted the world in March, but I'm actually describing the crash of EgyptAir Flight 990 more than 15 years ago, which killed all 217 passengers and crew.

I was chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board at the time and our extensive investigation determined that this was the deadliest example of pilot suicide known up to that time. The circumstances convinced us that airliners should be equipped with cockpit video cameras. Events since then have only strengthened my belief that we need these cameras.

Following a crash, investigators rely on the aircraft's "black boxes," which provide audio recordings of the cockpit and electronic parameters such as altitude, speed and aircraft configuration. Sometimes these tools fail to paint a full picture of the events leading up to a crash. If black boxes were supplemented by cockpit video recordings, investigators could establish more precisely what happened, identify the causes of these tragedies and take steps to prevent them in the future.

Even though our evidence in the EgyptAir Flight 990 investigation was compelling, Egyptian investigators, who were under significant political pressure from their government to reach a different conclusion, blamed the crash on mechanical failure. Without indisputable video evidence, the story focused on the two different explanations of the crash, drawing attention away from a candid assessment of what really happened. Pilot suicide is also suspected in the Silk Air crash in Indonesia in 1997 and the 2013 crash of a Mozambique Airlines flight, and in most cases the investigating authorities or pilots unions have rejected those findings. A camera in the cockpit would most likely have put to rest any doubt in those cases.

In June 2009, Air France Flight 447 crashed into the Atlantic Ocean, killing all 228 people on board. French investigators determined that pilot error ultimately caused the crash, precipitated by the plane's airspeed measuring instruments becoming unreliable because of a buildup of ice crystals; however, the investigators could not determine exactly what information the instruments provided to the crew. Without seeing what the crew saw, we cannot establish the exact conditions that led to the crash. Cockpit video would have shown us both the instrument readouts and how the pilots reacted to them. This information could have led to specific recommendations of how to change aircraft systems or pilot training to avoid similar tragedies.

Despite the clear investigative value of cockpit cameras, significant opposition to them remains. The airlines themselves are unwilling to foot the bill for their installation; however, in 2003 the NTSB stated that it costs less than $8,000 per plane to install a video recording system. The search for Air France Flight 447 cost $40 million, not counting the millions more for the investigation itself, the lost equipment, and payments to the victims' families. This would pay for over 5,000 video recording systems, or more than it would to equip Air France's entire fleet with cockpit cameras almost 15 times over.

Pilot unions have also come out against cockpit cameras over privacy concerns, just as they did during the earlier debate over cockpit audio recorders. When audio recorders were mandated, rules were put in place to ensure pilot privacy. Under U.S. law, investigators alone have the right to listen to cockpit audio recordings and only after an accident. If video recorders were installed, they should be governed by the same rules currently in place for audio recorders in order to strike a balance between pilot privacy and investigative value.

The EgyptAir and Air France crashes are only two examples in a long list of accidents where cockpit cameras would have helped investigators dispel uncertainty, draw more valuable conclusions and make recommendations to prevent future tragedies. The Germanwings tragedy shows that this concern is as pressing as ever, and that the safety of air travel is a goal towards which we must make constant improvements. Cameras in cockpits will not stop all air travel accidents, but they will ensure that we can learn as much as possible from each one in order to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past.

Jim Hall, president of Hall & Associates, was chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board.

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