During the first hours of the investigation at the site of the Voepass plane crash in Vinhedo (SP), which killed 58 passengers and four crew members last Friday (9), the aircraft’s black box was found among the wreckage.
Flight 2283, which left Cascavel (PR) and was heading to Guarulhos (SP), crashed in the interior of São Paulo approximately an hour and a half after takeoff.
The black box is made of disaster-resistant material and will be crucial in unraveling the reasons why the ATR 72-500 plummeted 4,000 meters in one minute.
When a plane crash occurs, the search for the black box is a priority after rescuing any potential survivors. The device is a data and voice recording system for the plane, which records the last conversations of the crew, as well as information about the aircraft such as speed, acceleration, weather conditions, altitude and power settings.
It is divided into two parts. One is the cockpit voice recorder (CVR), which captures the last few hours of conversations between the crew and sounds inside the aircraft. The other is the flight data recorder (FDR), which captures technical information about the path taken by the plane until it crashed.
In the case of the ATR that crashed in Vinhedo, both the CVR and the FDR were found and have already been sent to Brasília. In the federal capital, the recordings and data will be inspected by the Center for Investigation and Prevention of Aeronautical Accidents (Cenipa).
Based on the information preserved by the black box, the causes of the ATR crash will be clarified. The Voepass accident is the largest in Brazilian regular commercial aviation since 2007, when a TAM (now Latam) Airbus A320 crashed into a building belonging to the company itself in Congonhas, killing 199 people.
The first hypotheses that emerged after the accident were that ice had formed on the plane’s wings, which may have caused the aircraft to lose lift and plummet rapidly. To determine the cause of the disaster, it is essential that experts analyze the last conversation between the pilots and the ATR’s performance data, such as weather conditions and the rate of steep descent.
What is the black box made of?
The black box is made of a steel and titanium alloy, making it ultra-resistant. The piece can withstand forces greater than 3,400 G, that is, 3,400 times the gravitational force of the Earth, and temperature variations between -60ºC and 1,100ºC.
In the case of the ATR, even with the impact on a “flat screw”, which took away any chance of survival for the 62 victims, the part was found preserved by experts, according to information from the Secretary of Public Security of São Paulo, Guilherme Derrite.
Called a black box, the piece is actually orange. The choice of color has a reason: it needs to stand out among the debris and be able to be located in environments that are difficult to see.
The mechanism is usually stored in the rear of airplanes. Statistically, the tail of an aircraft is the part that suffers the least damage in air disasters.
Also aiming to preserve the pilot’s conversations and the plane’s route, the device has its own source of electrical power. The black box emits a location signal that can be tracked even at the bottom of the ocean.
Source: CNN Brasil
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