FAA Proposes Extending Cockpit Voice Recording to 25 Hours

The NTSB's top official called on the FAA to extend CVR capability beyond the two-hour requirement.

Tuesday, March 21, 2023 at 03:25 PM ET

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FAA is launching a rulemaking process to extend cockpit voice recorders (CVR) to capture 25 hours of information. [Credit: Pixabay]

Key Takeaways:

The FAA is initiating a rulemaking process to extend cockpit voice recorder (CVR) capture time from the current 2 hours to 25 hours.
This move follows a recent FAA safety summit and NTSB recommendations, prompted by incidents where CVR data crucial for investigations was overwritten due to the limited recording duration.
The FAA will also establish an Aviation Rulemaking Committee to explore greater use of other aircraft data and expanded flight-data monitoring.
While the NTSB and major airlines support the change (which is already mandated in new European aircraft), pilot unions express concerns about pilot privacy and potential misuse of the expanded recordings.

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FAA is launching a rulemaking process to extend cockpit voice recorders (CVR) to capture 25 hours of information, the agency has announced.

“We are initiating rulemaking that will require cockpit voice recorders to capture 25 hours of information,” FAA said in a March 16 statement. “We will also establish an Aviation Rulemaking Committee to explore how to make greater use of data gathered by the airplane and its systems, including expanded flight-data monitoring. We welcome any tools or resources Congress wants to provide to help us do this expeditiously.”