Will closed-circuit television (CCTV) cameras or camera video recorders (CVRs) watching over the shoulders of pilots inside the cockpit of a commercial airline finally become a reality?
Is “Big Brother” a welcome intrusion among commercial pilots?
Big Brother is a fictional character or symbol in George Orwell’s novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. It has entered the lexicon as a synonym for abuse of government power, particularly in respect to civil liberties, often specifically related to mass surveillance.
This question was being asked by aviation authorities in the light of the crash of a low-cost carrier Germanwings aircraft on Thursday. German and French prosecutors said the suspect, copilot Andreas Lubitz, appears to have deliberately crashed the Airbus A320 to the ground.
They based their findings on data gathered from the cockpit voice recorder (CVC). The Airbus 320 from Barcelona to Düsseldorf hit a mountain, killing all 144 passengers and six crew, after a scary eight-minute descent.
In a televised interview, the prosecutor said 28-year-old Lubitz had locked the captain out of the cockpit and reprogrammed the airplane on auto-pilot to intentionally “destroy the aircraft.”
Asked to comment about this latest development, the Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines (Caap) said it
would order local airlines to adopt new cockpit rules, such as requiring two pilots in the cockpit at all times.
However, the question of whether to order the installation of CCTV cameras has yet to be discussed in an ongoing meeting at the Caap headquarters in Pasay City. At least four airliners, including easyJet and Norwegian Air Shuttle, announced they would adopt new cockpit rules, according to news reports. Unlike many US carriers, European companies generally do not require two people in the cockpit at all times.
The country’s foremost authority on aviation, Dr. Avelino Zapanta, president and CEO of Seair International, said cockpit cameras “will provide the same benefits as CCTV cameras. If aircraft have CVRs, cameras should be helpful.”
Asked if pilots could have their way preventing the installation of CCTV cameras and CVRs inside the cockpit, Zapanta said the pilots would not object if such were mandated by the Caap. “Wala naman silang magagawa kapag mandate ng Caap,” said the author of the book 100 Years of Philippine Aviation, 1909-2009.
The second so-called black box that records flight data still has not been found, although investigators were quoted as saying the data revealed by the CVR was more than enough to establish the cause of the crash.
“The flight-data recorder records the speed, altitude and other aircraft parameters at the time of the crash, but not what the CVR had revealed,” according to one of the investigators commenting on television.
Some years ago, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) proposed the use of video cameras in the cockpit of passenger aircraft, following the 9/11 incident when two aircraft piloted by terrorists crashed into the iconic New York Twin Towers.
The NTSB then expressed the need for upgrading cockpit voice and flight-data recorders, citing some 52 accidents and incidents since 1983.
The international aviation community is aware of the safety benefits of crash-protected video recorders, the NTSB added.
In 2000 in the latest available record of the Air Line Pilots Association, International (Alpa), their president, Capt. Duane Woerth said: “Alpa has a proud 69-year history of safety advocacy, but these issues are both a waste of precious resources and a senseless intrusion on pilots’ privacy.”
He said to the uninitiated that cockpit video, as well as the psychological testing of pilots, offer the false allure of the all-inclusive solution to the nature and cause of every aircraft accident and incident.
“The reality is that video surveillance and psychological testing of pilots will not prevent accidents.”
“Air safety will be far better served by continuing to focus on improved flight recorders and proactive safety programs such as Flight Operations Quality Assurance and the Aviation Safety Action Program,” he added.
“Protecting pilots’ privacy and the release of data for inappropriate purposes is Alpa’s highest concern with regard to cameras in the cockpit. Experience with cockpit voice recorders in the past 40 years has proven that regardless of NTSB procedures, pilots are not protected from the misuse of data collected for the sole purpose of enhancing air safety.”
“The CVR has been used for sensational purposes by the media. It has been used by litigants in civil and criminal suits. It has even been used by employers for surveillance and disciplinary purposes,” Woerth said. “This is unacceptable,” the Alpa head said.
After a meeting in Tokyo, the International Federation of Air Line Pilots’ Associations issued a statement: “Unless and until all member-states of the International Civil Aviation Organization subscribe to enact and implement strong protective measures to positively guarantee protection of privileged information, and strict measures are imposed for abuses of national laws and regulations governing the use of cockpit recorder derived information, new and enhanced cockpit information collection devices will not be accepted by the international airline pilot profession.”