Who's calling for longer recordings? The NTSB or random people who don't know anything about crash investigations or politicians trying to win points with voters? Would longer recordings really help with investigations? From all the videos I've seen about them, maybe it's just selective memory, I can't recall a single time the NTSB pointed out they needed longer recordings to do or complete their investigation. I also can't think of any case off the top of my head where it would have helped in any way, much less a significant enough number to justify the cost (financial or otherwise).

Where is this call for longer recordings coming from, exactly?

The NTSB after Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 since the pilots forgot to pull the circuit breaker:

> The cockpit voice recorder (CVR) was overwritten after the accident. The CVR on the aircraft records a two-hour loop, and the circuit breaker in the cockpit was not pulled to stop the recording after the aircraft landed.[20] NTSB chair Jennifer Homendy subsequently called for extending capacity to 25 hours, rather than the currently mandated two hours, on all new and existing aircraft. If implemented, the new rule will align with International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) and European Union Aviation Safety Agency's (EASA) current regulations.[42]

In this incident with Alaska, the fuse for the recorder was not pulled within two hours and they lost recordings from the moment the door fell out. There have been other lost recordings in the past.

Okay, and how would that have changed the investigation when the primary cause is Boeing's incompetence during assembly?

Helios flight 522 had no usable voice recordings due to the nature of the incident. The cockpit recordings begin well after the last pilot actions from what I recall. They were able to piece it together using comms with the towers, but that was more luck.

Im not sure I understand the hesitation with it either way, however. Can’t think of a reason why you wouldn’t want the data preserved.

I watch alot of air incident reports on YT. Many of accidents (not crash) include words like "Unfortunately we wouldn't know exactly what happened, because pilots forgot to turn off the voice recorder after landing". Pilots become conviniently forgetful when some accident happens and it can possibly point to their mistake. Because privacy of two people at their job place is above safety of whole industry, you know, so others cannot earn on their expirience. I'd say, keep it at 2 hours, but suspend and send for training all the forgetful ones. OR, even better, make it impossible to open cockpit door after you have landed if voice recorder is still on. Make it a part of after-landing checklist. Make huge alarm siren. Make SWAT surround every plane until recorder is off. Anything is better then just waiving off the responsibility and potentially valuable experience

> but no way you can record for a day when it is being flown

What are you trying to say?

Cockpit voice recorders are frequently overwritten because they are limited to only 2 hours in the US. Pilots' unions have pushed back on increasing this, stating they have privacy concerns.

Flight recorders are fireproof / water proof / shock proof devices on the airplane and are limited in size of memory they can have. On the factory floor, on the other hand, one can store lots of data or/and upload it to some massive cloud storage for backup / retention. It is totally different ball game.

It's not at all a technical limitation here. The cockpit voice recorder will record 25 hours in the EU and only 2 hours in the US, and that's been the case for years.

Pilots in USA are against recording more than 2 hours of black box flight data. When there is many significantly longer flights.