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When planes crash at airports, it seems the only video available is amateur footage several miles away with terrible quality.

Why don't we have video recordings of all takeoffs and landings at the airport?

Rhino Driver
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Rick Bard
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  • The flight recorders hold all the data the investigators need. so they can just recreate the events on PC simulation and so on – chaos505 Apr 17 '15 at 08:21
  • Rick, welcome to Aviation.SE. Are you talking about video recording from within the cabin or cockpit or are you inquiring about external footage at airports, e.g. CCTV recordings? – SentryRaven Apr 17 '15 at 08:29
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    This is an interesting idea... I imagine you could cover all runways and taxiways with perhaps a few hundred thousand dollars of camera in the tower, and I know the NTSB has, in some cases, used security camera footage from the airport. – raptortech97 Apr 17 '15 at 10:55
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    A more important question than "why don't we?" is "why should we?", i.e. what benefit would we get from spending billions of dollars (worldwide) on recording millions of take-offs and landings per year? Accidents are extremely rare already; would we learn anything that we can't already find out some other way? Is the benefit - if any - worth the investment? – Pondlife Apr 17 '15 at 12:20
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    @Pondlife won't someone think of the news channels? plots are boring, people wants to see explosions on tv. – Federico Apr 17 '15 at 13:21
  • @Federico - you were sarcastic, agreed ! ;) However, on a more serious tone : would the news channels... pay the camera installation ? finance the maintainance ? handle the cost of monitoring ? the insurance ? etc. Worldwide ? Of course no. Anyway, we already have powerfull computers to put things in motion pictures with lots of explosions and kaboooms and torn burned metal. – Karl Stephen Apr 18 '15 at 14:51
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    Here's the thing for me. Let's say, worldwide, some great benefactor spends 2 billion USD to set this all up so that every runway, taxiway, and essentially every part of every major airport is covered with video... Murphy's Law says the next three airline accidents will occur within a mile of airports. – CGCampbell Apr 19 '15 at 11:26
  • Billions of dollars. U can go online and watch an Eagles nest... A swimming pool at a resort... Someone buying a cigarette at a convienance store 24/7.... Officials can observe almost every prisoner in the USA... Cost prohibitive... I don't think so. If video would not be useful then why do investigators always want to talk to eyewitnesses.??? – Rick Bard Apr 19 '15 at 21:31
  • Yes... Thanks Sentry! – Rick Bard Apr 20 '15 at 17:39
  • A better system would be a camera tracking a flight until it was well onto climb and onto taxi on arrival. That would however require perhaps several units, a telescope, at least a FLIR and regular spectrum camera. Now that would probably be a nice to have in the event of an incident or violation of a regulation.

    Just not sure how much data would be captured beyond the rare event of an incident, that could put some ongoing value delivery.

     – jCisco Jul 18 '15 at 03:00
  • My first thought reading the question: how can you video-record a takeoff/landing when there is fog and almost zero horizontal visibility? – Manu H Dec 06 '15 at 17:25
  • @ManuH with almost zero horizontal visibility you will not have takeoff/landing. – vasin1987 Jul 02 '16 at 14:03
  • @vasin1987 ILS cat IIIc allow landing with almost no visibility – Manu H Jul 21 '16 at 07:19
  • @ManuH agree. However no Cat IIIc is in operation as of july 2016. – vasin1987 Jul 21 '16 at 11:18
  • @ManuH: You mean literally no visibility. Almost no visibility is class IIIb. – Vikki Oct 03 '18 at 22:45

2 Answers2

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Because video is mostly useless for investigation.

The investigators need to know the exact flightpath, which is already recorded by the ATC radar and by the flight data recorder, they need to know whether and which systems failed, which is recorded by the flight data recorder, and they need to know what the pilots were doing, for which they have cockpit voice recorder and the radio communication is also recorded in the ATC facility (tower).

Video would be worse for determining the flight path than both ATC radar and FDR and while ATC radar does not have attitude, FDR does and again more precisely than video. Plus video might, depending on angle, have external damage, but that can generally be determined by examining the wreckage quite fine.

So video would add very little information over the existing recordings and thus it is not cost-effective to add it for just this purpose at all airports (it may be used if it is installed for security purposes).

abelenky
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Jan Hudec
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    Actually, there have been several instances where video footage proved to be a huge asset in determining the causal factors of crashes. Off the top of my head, the 747 crash at Bagram. – Rhino Driver Apr 18 '15 at 20:04
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    @RhinoDriver: Not really. The video allowed to take an educated guess at the cause earlier on, but to make any definite conclusion the FDR data were needed and used. – Jan Hudec Apr 19 '15 at 09:26
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    And if the FDR data correlates with what the investigators see in the video then their conclusion is strengthened. The NTSB actively seeks out video evidence, therefore Occam's Razor would lead me to believe they actually use it in their investigations. Not only that, but the NTSB has requested cockpit video recorders several times since 2000-- they seem to be very interested in video evidence. More so, however, unless you are an investigator yourself, or have a credible source you can cite, then that is just your opinion, and the use of video in previous cases suggests otherwise. – Rhino Driver Apr 19 '15 at 15:26
  • @RhinoDriver: Good investigator will always collect all evidence they can get, even if it is duplicate. But I haven't heard of accident where a video would be critical piece of evidence, i.e. some conclusions had no other supporting evidence except the video. No, I am not investigator, but all the reports are public. You can try to find one. As for cockpit video recorders, that is another thing; that is to record pilot actions. Even not all controls elements are recorded in FDR (e.g. circuit breaker positions) and other actions may be important (e.g. fight in cockpit). – Jan Hudec Apr 19 '15 at 17:07
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As an airport manager, I often don't have the money to place cameras everywhere. Videos at the airport are an airport sponsor's responsibility, and most airport operators have very limited budgets. When you get into the larger airports, the cost is still an issue because of the amount of acreage that has to be covered. The other issue, is that Part 139 prohibits certain items from being in the runway safety area, and a camera is not generally considered frangible. Even if I could put a camera by the runway, the best that I could do is a wildlife camera with at most a 70' visual distance with a heavily pixelated image.

Nathan Marcucci
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  • Oh, right, like FDRs and CVRs will explain taxiway collisions. No, cameras are too expensive. Let's save then for places with deep pockets like 7-11 stores or almost every fricking place on earth EXCEPT airports.

    They have something to hide. I have no idea what but somebody doesn't want them. - http://aviation.stackexchange.com/users/12563/greg-of-swallowbrook

     – Peter Kämpf Dec 06 '15 at 16:41
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    Something to hide? Be realistic. Cameras, that can last outside in harsh conditions with minimal maintenance, that can record at high enough resolution to be useful in an investigation, that won't themselves be a danger to aircraft, that cover all the relevant areas, that can work at night or in the rain or fog or snow, not to mention all the infrastructure that goes with them (recording equipment, connections between the cameras and recorders, power) gets pretty expensive. The real question is whether all that money could be more effective on other aviation safety improvements instead. – Zach Lipton Jul 02 '16 at 10:07