Three Cases Where Cockpit Imagery Would have Helped Investigators

Air Safety Week, August 2, 2004

The aircraft involved were not required to be equipped with CVRs or DFDRs

Aviation Charter King Air 100, Eveleth, Minn., 2002 (see ASW, Nov. 24, 2003):

"Because of the lack of available information, the investigation was unable to determine the crew's actions on the approach. The pilots failed to establish the proper course for the VOR approach, and the approach speed was never fully stabilized. Investigators were unable to determine the degree of coordination between the two pilots, or even who the flying pilot was. Furthermore, the investigation was unable to positively determine whether the pilots were able to establish adequate visual cues for continuing the approach. Investigators were also unable to precisely confirm the speed of the airplane just before the loss of control. These questions might have been answered if a cockpit image recorder had been installed."

Dept. of the Interior Cessna 208, Montrose, Colo., 1997:

"This was one of the accidents cited in the safety board's original recommendations on image recorders.

"The pilot and all eight passengers were killed. The flight was an ondemand charter for the Bureau of Reclamation.

"Several different scenarios were considered as possible reasons for the pilot's loss of control. For example, the pilot may have induced a stall in an attempt to maintain altitude; he may have unintentionally entered cloud conditions and become disoriented; he may have entered clouds and accumulated sufficient ice to ... induce a stall; or his flying or decision-making skills may have become impaired due to the lack of oxygen. Unfortunately, no scenario could be verified with the available evidence.

"An image recorder may have provided information to help answer some of these questions."

Oklahoma State University King Air 200, 2002 (see ASW, June 23, 2003):

"A cockpit video recording of even the last few minutes of the flight might have allowed us to eliminate one or more of the possible power failure scenarios, perhaps by observing the annunciator panel or seeing whether the pilot activated the inverter switch or not. And very importantly, we could have answered questions about how the pilot interfaced with the other pilot in the right seat, who supposedly had an operating set of flight instruments in front of him.

"To this day, we do not know what the person in the right seat was doing. Was there a transfer of aircraft control? Did the right seater further exacerbate an existing problem? We will never know, but data from a cockpit image recording of the event may have allowed us to do so."

Source: Frank Hilldrup, NTSB investigator, July 27 statement (extracts)

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