As investigators strive to determine the reason for the fuel cut-off switch activation that preceded the Air India 787 crash, uncertainty over the accident is reviving calls for cockpit video to supplement cockpit-voice and flight-data recordings.
With pilot action – inadvertent or deliberate – still a line of inquiry, and all the controversy such a conclusion would bring, the investigation is under pressure to consider all possibilities before putting forward its probable cause.
But building a full cockpit scenario from audio evidence alone is difficult. While audio provides vital information on cockpit discussion and reasoning, it limits investigators’ ability to determine specific actions or assign responsibility.
Video can reveal the cockpit environment, clarify how the crew interacted with flight controls, and settle differing interpretations of pilot actions.
The US National Transportation Safety Board has long sought a mandate for cockpit-video recording, a measure resisted by pilot groups over confidentiality concerns – despite the proliferation of cameras across a range of other sectors, including public transport. Ubiquity of mobile phones has resulted in their footage becoming a valuable resource to investigators.
Absence of video can complicate investigations. The probe into an Atlas Air Boeing 767-300ER freighter crash in February 2019 had to explore, using simulators, whether a pilot could brush a go-around switch with their wristwatch while reaching behind thrust levers for flap or speedbrake controls.
Inadvertent action is one issue; deliberate is another. Intentional destruction of an aircraft at the hands of its pilot can be difficult to prove, and the associated stigma is sufficient for outright denial; the losses of an EgyptAir 767-300ER in 1990 and a SilkAir 737-300 in 1997 are still disputed.
IATA director-general Willie Walsh, a former airline pilot, argues that there is a “strong argument for the inclusion” of cockpit-video recording to assist accident investigation.
“Our industry has always been very open [about] sharing information,” he said, speaking in Singapore about a month after the Air India accident on 12 June.
“We believe that any accident or any major incident that takes place needs to be investigated fully, properly… and recorded so that everybody can benefit from the experience.”
While he describes the investigators’ preliminary findings as “helpful”, with “more information than most people were expecting”, Walsh says: “It’s quite possible that a video, recorded in addition to the voice recording, would significantly assist in conducting that investigation.”
But the objections of flightcrew representatives, such as the US Air Line Pilots Association, International (ALPA), date back more than four decades.
ALPA claims video monitoring would add “virtually nothing of real value” to the investigative process that cannot already be obtained from current flight-recorder information. It also believes that video is “subjective” and could lead investigators “down the wrong path”.
“Video imaging is an imprecise form of information,” the association states. “If an image shows a pilot’s hand moving toward a switch, or moving his or her leg, that does not prove that [they] activated that switch or made an input to the rudder.”
It adds that the role of investigators is not to solve an individual accident but to improve aviation safety, and this aim can be achieved without “invasion of privacy”. ALPA’s concerns about video being made public in circumstances such as a legal case have been further heightened by the accessibility of footage over the internet.
