Published in Runway Girl Network
Written by Mary Kirby
Honeywell and Curtiss-Wright are making fast progress in bringing ‘black box in the sky’ functionality to their nextgen flight recorders.
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Many in industry agree that getting more FDR and cockpit voice recorder (CVR) data – sooner – into the hands of airlines is needed in the event of an emergency and to aid accident investigators. Spurring development is an upcoming 2021 EASA mandate which requires CVRs on new aircraft weighing over 27,000 kilograms to have a recording duration of at least 25 hours.
In February 2019, Honeywell and Curtiss-Wright signed an agreement to develop the next generation of mandate-compliant CVRs and FDRs. As part of the agreement, Curtiss-Wright became the exclusive supplier for Honeywell’s nextgen recorders for the air transport and business aviation markets. And its certified Fortress hardware – a 25-hour CVR/FDR recorder – served as the foundation for Honeywell’s new Connected Recorder-25.
At that time, Honeywell said it would offer the product in several variants, including as a standalone CVR, as a standalone FDR, or as a combined cockpit voice and flight data recorder. Work has progressed. This week, the two firms announced that the Honeywell Connected Recorder-25 has received EASA TSO certification, and that it “meets and exceeds” the requirements of the upcoming 2021 EASA minimum 25-hour cockpit voice recording mandate. The combi unit supports both flight data recording and mandatory cockpit voice recording in a crash survivable memory unit.