My neighbor, a retired airline captain, said we're too focused on the black boxes after a crash
We were talking about that incident in Phoenix last month, and he said his crew always cared more about the real-time data from the ACARS messages than the final CVR/FDR readout. He argued that by the time we get the boxes, the story is already written, but the ACARS can show the system failures as they happened. It made me think, are we putting all our diagnostic eggs in one basket waiting for the recorders? How many of you guys actually get to work with the ACARS data stream during troubleshooting, not just after the fact?