CCVR i cockpit?

Battle Shapes Up Over Video Cameras in Airline Cockpits

Air-safety watchdogs advocate installing video cameras, putting pilots groups on the defensive

Unions representing airline pilots have blocked video recorders in the cockpit for decades. PHOTO: ZOLTAN BALOGH/EUROPEAN PRESSPHOTO AGENCY

By ANDY PASZTOR

International air-safety watchdogs are poised to advocate installing video cameras in airliner cockpits, putting pilots groups on the defensive and prompting them to recast their opposition strategy.

The aviation arm of the United Nations is expected to make a big push later this year for such changes, according to industry officials, safety experts and others familiar with the issue.

Those efforts have been stoked to some extent by a spate of high-profile crashes in the past year, including a presumed suicide crash by the 27-year-old co-pilot of Germanwings Flight 9525, who flew his jet into a French mountainside, killing all 150 people aboard.

The tussle over cockpit video recorders is likely to take years, and its outcome is uncertain. In any case, individual countries will retain the ultimate enforcement authority.

Pilots unions and other who oppose video cameras on commercial flight decks are organizing more aggressively than ever, revising their arguments and seeking out new allies.

The unions have successfully blocked the recorders for decades, largely by focusing on privacy concerns and raising the prospect of images being misused by crash investigators, criminal prosecutors or the news media. Those arguments remain central to the debate. But some union leaders have been putting more emphasis on the issue of cost to the airlines as they face what is likely to be an uphill battle.

Officials at the U.N.-backed International Civil Aviation Organization, which sets global safety standards for airlines, have the option of mandating video in cockpits or merely encouraging air carriers and national regulators to move in that direction.

Backed by the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board and agencies in other countries responsible for investigating aircraft accidents, the video devices are intended to supplement black-box voice and flight-data recorders found on commercial planes, and not to provide routine monitoring.

Last month, Christopher Hart, chairman of the NTSB, told a Senate panel that "imaging systems can provide the information needed to help determine the cause of [certain] types of accidents and to identify revisions needed to prevent a recurrence." The cameras could be set up to capture cockpit displays along with the hands of pilots, but not their faces.

With support for cockpit video recorders growing, some pilot leaders hope they can derail the momentum by highlighting the price tag, joining forces with airline representatives worried about the cost.

"We're getting a little bit smarter about finding allies in this area," Martin Chalk, the newly elected president of the International Federation of Air Line Pilots' Associations, said in an interview last week. Mr. Chalk and other pilot representatives say the limited capital devoted to safety efforts should focus on other improvements. They say videos wouldn't add significantly to information routinely captured by today's black boxes.

In a separate interview last month, Tim Canoll, president of the Air Line Pilots Association, which represents more than 50,000 aviators across North America, was asked if potential privacy violations remained the primary objection. "That's not our lead concern. That's way down the list," Mr. Canoll said.

"When you make a decision to spend money on that system," Mr. Canoll said, "you are foregoing many other systems" that would ensure "we're getting our biggest bang for the buck."

On Friday, Mr. Canoll said his organization has cited cost issues since the 1990s and is now convinced cockpit cameras amount to "an overreaction and won't improve safety." He predicted that the "desire to write rules will wane quickly," and pilots will step up their campaign "when the discussions begin in earnest."

ICAO policy makers haven't indicated how soon they intend to take up the matter, or what type of language they might consider. But in a speech to an international pilots-union conference in Madrid last month, Don Wykoff, a Delta Air Lines Inc. captain and IFALPA's outgoing president, made it clear that pilots anticipate the Montreal-based ICAO will mount an all-out push for cockpit video within a few months. He urged a formidable response by pilots.

Arguments over imaging are "coming to Montreal this fall, not maybe," Mr. Wykoff said. "We must engage in our home countries," and "we need to stop this," before it builds up a head of steam, he told hundreds of pilots from around the globe. "We cannot wait for this" debate to formally kick off, he said, and "think that we can be 100% successful ensuring this does not happen; we need to get the work done before then."

The maneuvering comes amid heightened public interest throughout the U.S. in wearable video cameras intended to record the actions of police officers, sheriff's deputies and other law-enforcement officials. It also comes as some helicopter manufacturers equip certain models with video-imaging recorders able to capture pilot actions and flight instruments.

Selected jetliner models also have video cameras taking images outside the plane. But currently, no major commercial-aircraft maker has taken steps to install video cameras inside cockpits as investigative tools.

Why Some Airline Pilots Don't Want Cameras in the Cockpit

A Deutsche Lufthansa AG pilot, left, and co-pilot sit in the cockpit of a Boeing 747-8 passenger aircraft on Oct. 2, 2014.

Authorities debating whether the benefits outweigh the risks

The debate over video cameras in airplane cockpits is heating up, as a string of high-profile aviation disasters prompt concerns over whether accident investigators have sufficient information.

The United Nations' aviation arm is expected to make a big push later this year to install video cameras in airliner cockpits, the Wall Street Journal reports. The discussions over the additional technology will likely take years; the regulation will ultimately fall into the hands of individual countries.

Pilot unions and other groups have long opposed cockpit video cameras, arguing that images or footage may be misused by accident investigators, prosecutors or news media. Additionally, some argue that the information provided by the cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder - neither of which collect visual information - is sufficient. Others worry that the cameras may be doubled for routine monitoring of pilots, or that the costs of installing such technology are too high.

But cockpit camera opponents are facing an uphill battle. Christopher Hart, chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board, argued last week before a Senate panel that in the crashes of SilkAir Flight 185 and EgyptAir Flight 990 in 1997 and 1999, respectively, information from cockpit cameras would have been able to confirm the suspected pilot suicides. Instead, both investigations turned up inconclusive despite strong evidence of a deliberate crash.