25-Hour Cockpit Voice Recorder (CVR) Requirement, New Aircraft Production

DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION <SUBAGY>Federal Aviation Administration</SUBAGY> <CFR>14 CFR Parts 91, 121, 125, and 135</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No.: FAA-2023-2270; Notice No. 24-04]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 2120-AL92</RIN> <SUBJECT>25-Hour Cockpit Voice Recorder (CVR) Requirement, New Aircraft Production</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), Department of Transportation (DOT). <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM). <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> This rulemaking would increase the recording time of cockpit voice recorders from the mandated 2 hours to a proposed 25-hour recording time for all future manufactured aircraft. This rulemaking would provide accident investigators, aircraft operators, and civil aviation authorities with substantially more cockpit voice recorder data to help find the probable causes of incidents and accidents, prevent future incidents and accidents, and make the FAA's regulations more consistent with existing international requirements. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Send comments on or before February 2, 2024. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> Send comments identified by docket number FAA-2023-2270 using any of the following methods: • <E T="03">Federal eRulemaking Portal:</E> Go to <E T="03">www.regulations.gov</E> and follow the online instructions for sending your comments electronically. • <E T="03">Mail:</E> Send comments to Docket Operations, M-30; U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT), 1200 New Jersey Avenue SE, Room W12-140, West Building Ground Floor, Washington, DC 20590-0001. • <E T="03">Hand Delivery or Courier:</E> Take comments to Docket Operations in Room W12-140 of the West Building Ground Floor at 1200 New Jersey Avenue SE, Washington, DC, between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m., Monday through Friday, except Federal holidays. • <E T="03">Fax:</E> Fax comments to Docket Operations at (202) 493-2251. <E T="03">Privacy:</E> In accordance with 5 U.S.C. 553(c), DOT solicits comments from the public to better inform its rulemaking process. DOT posts these comments, without edit, including any personal information the commenter provides, to <E T="03">www.regulations.gov,</E> as described in the system of records notice (DOT/ALL-14 FDMS), which can be reviewed at <E T="03">www.dot.gov/privacy.</E> <E T="03">Docket:</E> Background documents or comments received may be read at <E T="03">www.regulations.gov/</E> at any time. Follow the online instructions for accessing the docket or go to the Docket Operations in Room W12-140 of the West Building Ground Floor at 1200 New Jersey Avenue SE, Washington, DC, between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m., Monday through Friday, except Federal holidays. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Charisse Green, AFS-340, Aircraft Maintenance Division, Office of Safety Standards, Federal Aviation Administration, 800 Independence Ave. SW, Washington, DC 20591; telephone (202) 267-1675; email <E T="03">Charisse.green@faa.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Authority for This Rulemaking</HD> The FAA's authority to issue rules on aviation safety is found in title 49 of the United States Code. Subtitle I, section 106 describes the authority of the FAA Administrator. Subtitle VII, Aviation Programs, describes in more detail the scope of the FAA's authority. This rulemaking is issued under the authority described in subtitle VII, part A, subpart III, section 44701. Under that section, the FAA is charged with prescribing regulations providing minimum standards for other practices, methods, and procedures necessary for safety in air commerce. This regulation is within the scope of that authority since flight data recorders are the only means available to account for aircraft movement and flight crew actions critical to finding the probable cause of incidents or accidents, including data that could prevent future incidents or accidents. <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Executive Summary</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. Overview of Proposed Rule</HD> This rulemaking effort proposes to amend the cockpit voice recorder (CVR) regulations to increase the recording duration of CVRs. Currently, CVRs are required to retain the last two hours of recorded information. Once this 2-hour limit is reached, a CVR overwrites the oldest data to maintain a rolling 2-hour recording. This proposal would increase the minimum duration of CVR recordings to 25 hours. The proposed change would affect all newly manufactured aircraft operating under title 14 of the Code of Federal Regulations (14 CFR) parts 91, 121, 125, and 135, one year after the effective date of the final rule. <HD SOURCE="HD2">B. Statement of the Problem</HD> The current 2-hour recording duration requirement does not meet the NTSB's needs for investigations and subsequent safety recommendations. Since the NTSB issued Safety Recommendation A-18-030, it has investigated numerous accidents and incidents where CVR data relevant to the accident or incident has been overwritten because the relevant recording occurred earlier than the available two hours of recording. <HD SOURCE="HD2">C. Summary of the Costs and Benefits</HD> Benefits of the proposed rule are expected to stem from a reduction in accident risk and time savings. Specifically, the additional audio of longer duration CVRs would provide authorities with more information on events and procedures undertaken in the flight deck in investigated incidents. This increased data may lead to new or more fully informed FAA recommendations or policy changes that could further enhance safety and reduce the risk that an incident becomes an accident. In addition, updated CVR models have also revamped the CVR interface tools, resulting in time-saving benefits. The simplified and more intuitive tools allow personnel to be trained quicker on operation, retrieve audio data faster, and perform additional diagnostic services to shorten downtime. The FAA currently lacks data to predict the exact reduction in accident risk and labor hours and requests comments on the expected value of these benefits. The FAA has assessed projected compliance costs using the incremental cost of equipping a 25-hour capable CVR over a comparable 2-hour unit to all applicable newly produced aircraft. Market research indicates that the difference between these units is minimal, ranging from near parity to an upper bound of approximately $4,500. Using that upper bound, the total cost over 20 years is estimated to be $102.42 million at 7 percent present value, with annualized costs of $9.67 million. As operational procedures are expected to be similar between the older 2-hour and newer 25-hour capable models, the FAA anticipates no other notable costs. The FAA invites comments on the cost estimates and assumptions. <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. Background</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. CVRs: National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) Recommendations and FAA Responses</HD> The FAA previously has engaged in rulemaking to address past NTSB recommendations concerning CVRs. In December 1996, the NTSB issued Safety Recommendation A-96-171 as a result of its investigation of an accident in January 1996. <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> In this accident, an aircraft touched down hard in the approach light area short of a runway at the Nashville International Airport, resulting in minor injuries to passengers and crew and substantial damage to the aircraft's tail section, nose gear, and engines. During the investigation, the NTSB was hampered by the fact that the 30-minute closed-loop CVR tape did not include recordings of the initial approach to the runway, the hard landing event, or the go-around because that information had been recorded over and permanently lost after the airplane safely stopped on the ground. <SU>2</SU> <FTREF/> As a result, the NTSB recommended that the recording limitation for newly manufactured CVRs meet a minimum recording duration of two hours. <SU>3</SU> <FTREF/> The FAA adopted this recommendation in 2008. <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  NTSB. Safety Recommendation A-96-171, December 11, 1996. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>2</SU>   <E T="03">Id.</E> </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>3</SU>   <E T="03">Id.</E> </FTNT> In August 2002, the NTSB issued a safety recommendation letter to the FAA, identifying delays or failures by the operator to deactivate CVRs after reportable events as a major factor in the systemic problem of retaining data, as information was overwritten in the remainder of a flight with an incident or accident. <SU>4</SU> <FTREF/> The NTSB recommended that the FAA require the CVR be deactivated immediately upon completion of flight after a reportable incident or accident has occurred. In response, the FAA issued Notice 8400.48, “Cockpit Voice Recorder Deactivation After a Reportable Event,” on April 25, 2003. This notice advised air carriers to add a checklist item to deactivate the CVR, manually or automatically, immediately upon completion of a flight with a reportable accident or incident. On October 6, 2003, the NTSB considered Notice 8400.48 to have met the intent of Safety Recommendation A-02-24 for aircraft operating under parts 121 and 135 requirements, but not part 91 requirements as the notice did not address part 91 operators. <SU>5</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>4</SU>  NTSB. Safety Recommendation A-02-24, August 29, 2002. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>5</SU>  NTSB. Safety Recommendation Report A-18-04 at 3, October 2, 2018. </FTNT> On March 7, 2008, the FAA amended the CVR regulations in accordance with NTSB Safety Recommendation A-96-171. <SU>6</SU> <FTREF/> The final rule, “Revisions to Cockpit Voice Recorder and Digital Flight Data Recorder Regulations,” increased the duration of certain CVR recordings, incr ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 65k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━