[Congressional Bills 118th Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[H.R. 3634 Introduced in House (IH)]

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118th CONGRESS
  1st Session
                                H. R. 3634

 To direct the Administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration to 
    issue regulations to improve flight recorder and aircraft crash 
   location requirements on certain commercial passenger aircraft by 
requiring the installation of a second combination digital flight data 
and cockpit voice recorder system that enables data recovery without an 
                    underwater search and recovery.


_______________________________________________________________________


                    IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                              May 24, 2023

Mr. Cohen (for himself and Mr. Burchett) introduced the following bill; 
       which was referred to the Committee on Transportation and 
                             Infrastructure

_______________________________________________________________________

                                 A BILL


 
 To direct the Administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration to 
    issue regulations to improve flight recorder and aircraft crash 
   location requirements on certain commercial passenger aircraft by 
requiring the installation of a second combination digital flight data 
and cockpit voice recorder system that enables data recovery without an 
                    underwater search and recovery.

    Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the 
United States of America in Congress assembled,

SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.

    This Act may be cited as the ``Safe Aviation and Flight Enhancement 
Act of 2023''.

SEC. 2. FINDINGS.

    Congress finds the following:
            (1) Flight data recorder (referred to in this Act as an 
        ``FDR'') data and cockpit voice recorder (referred to in this 
        Act as a ``CVR'') data, often referred to as ``black box'' 
        data, on commercial passenger aircraft is crucial in all 
        aircraft crash investigations, providing vital information to 
        determine the cause of an accident and to prevent future 
        recurrences.
            (2) Underwater locating device (referred to in this Act as 
        a ``ULD'') beacons generate a low operating frequency to 
        increase signal detection range and improve signal 
        transmissibility through aircraft structures to aid in the 
        identification of aircraft wreckage. Airframe-mounted ULDs with 
        a minimum operating life of 90 days will improve the underwater 
        search for aircraft wreckage.
            (3) Aircraft equipped with a tamper-resistant method to 
        broadcast to a ground station sufficient information to 
        establish the location within 6 nautical miles (referred to in 
        this Act as ``nm'') of where an aircraft terminates flight will 
        facilitate a quicker identification of an accident location, a 
        faster search and rescue response, and a more effective search 
        effort in remote locations and overwater accidents. Use of an 
        emergency locator transmitter (referred to in this Act as an 
        ``ELT''), whether as a stand-alone unit or as part of an 
        automatic deployable flight recorder, can transmit the location 
        of an accident and provide a homing capability for search and 
        rescue personnel. In addition, more frequent broadcasts from 
        data link communication systems are capable of reporting an 
        aircraft's position every minute to reduce the search area to a 
        radius of less than 6 nm.
            (4) As the aviation environment grows more complex, to 
        include a surge in air traffic, the integration of new manned 
        and unmanned aerial and space vehicle activity, an increasingly 
        dynamic national security environment, and the growth of 
        extended overwater and remote location flight routes, it is 
        imperative for air safety investigators to quickly locate a 
        downed aircraft and survivors, and to have rapid access to 
        secure black box data to enable and support the early 
        identification of safety and security issues, and the quick 
        implementation of appropriate preventative actions to address 
        potential risks to the commercial aviation fleet.
            (5) Air crash victim families deserve assurances that 
        search and rescue teams will have rapid access to a crash 
        location's site to speed survivor recovery efforts, and that 
        victim families will have access to timely and factual 
        information regarding the cause of an accident and the fate of 
        their loved ones.
            (6) Hundreds of millions of dollars are unnecessarily 
        expended, and significant time is wasted in efforts to locate 
        and recover traditional fixed ``black boxes'' in underwater 
        crash investigations.
            (7) Existing, advanced flight recorder technologies are 
        available today that will aid in the rapid location of an 
        aircraft and potential survivors, while also providing safety 
        investigators with timelier recovery of FDR/CVR data by 
        avoiding accident investigation delays caused by prolonged 
        underwater and remote location search operations.
            (8) Recent commercial passenger aircraft crashes involving 
        United States and international manufactured aircraft have 
        demonstrated the significant challenges and unnecessary delays 
        safety investigators face in trying to locate and recover 
        traditional fixed black boxes from the bottom of the ocean, 
        including the following:
                    (A) On March 8, 2014, Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, 
                B-777-200ER, disappeared with 239 passengers and crew. 
                International search and recovery efforts for the 
                aircraft and black boxes have involved 29 nations and 
                hundreds of millions of dollars in resources, becoming 
                the most expensive search and recovery mission in 
                aviation history. Nine years later, the aircraft is 
                still missing, and the cause of the crash is still 
                unknown.
                    (B) On June 1, 2009, Air France Flight 447 crashed 
                into the Atlantic Ocean with 216 passengers and 12 
                crewmembers. Despite locating aircraft wreckage within 
                5 days, it still took nearly 2 years and an estimated 
                cost of over $160,000,000 to recover the FDR and CVR 
                from the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean at a depth of 
                12,000 feet.
                    (C) On October 29, 2018, Lion Air 610 became the 
                first of two fatal B-737 Max 8 crashes. Despite being 
                in only 100 feet of water, it took investigators 77 
                days to locate and recover the CVR, which provided 
                critical information.
                    (D) On July 2, 2021, Transair Flight 810, B-737-
                200, crashed off the coast of Mamala Bay, Oahu. While 
                investigators knew the location of the aircraft, it 
                took 4 months to recover the FDR and CVR from the 
                bottom of the ocean.
                    (E) On January 9, 2021, Sriwijaya Air Flight 182, 
                B-737-500, crashed into the Java Sea in a depth of only 
                89 feet, yet the recovery of the CVR still took 81 
                days.
                    (F) On June 30, 2009, Yemenia Airlines IY626 
                crashed off of the coast of Comoros, with 152 
                passengers and aircrew. The sole survivor, a 12-year-
                old girl, was found clinging to wreckage after floating 
                in the ocean for 13 hours. Her accounts shared that 
                more passengers survived the crash but succumbed to 
                hypothermia due to the delay in locating the downed 
                aircraft. The FDR and CVR were not recovered until 
                nearly 2 months later, at a depth of 3,900 feet.
                    (G) On January 1, 2007, Adam Air Flight 574, 
                carrying 102 passengers and aircrew, crashed off the 
                coast of Indonesia. The FDR and CVR were located within 
                1 month, but could not be recovered until 7 months 
                later due to the difficulty of the underwater 
                environment. The FDR and CVR were found at a depth of 
                6,600 feet and 4,600 feet apart.
            (9) In 2012, the International Civil Aviation Organization 
        (referred to in this Act as the ``ICAO'') adopted a standard 
        requiring all aircraft with a maximum certificated takeoff mass 
        over 15,000 kilograms (kg) for which a type certificate is 
        issued on or after January 1, 2016, and which are required to 
        be equipped with both a CVR and FDR, to be equipped with two 
        combination FDR/CVR recorder systems.
            (10) In 2016, ICAO issued an additional ruling that as of 
        January 2021, all new commercial aircraft types must be 
        equipped with a means to recover flight recorder data in a 
        timely manner. The intent for this standard is to enable 
        authorities to recover at least one set of FDR/CVR data without 
        the need for underwater searches or prolonged terrain searches.
            (11) On October 7, 2014, following the disappearance of 
        MH370 and the nearly 2-year search and recovery effort required 
        to retrieve the black boxes from Air France Flight 447, the 
        National Transportation Safety Board (referred to in this Act 
        as the ``NTSB'') convened the ``Emerging Flight Data and 
        Locator Technology Forum''. The forum included government, 
        industry, and investigative experts to discuss technologies 
        that could be used to improve the location of aircraft wreckage 
        and the timely recovery of flight data following accidents in 
        remote locations or over water.
            (12) The NTSB has stated its highest concern is for 
        aircraft that fly extended overwater operations outside of 
        radar coverage because timely response and recovery of data are 
        more challenging when an accident occurs in a remote area. 
        Currently, aircraft that fly extended overwater operations must 
        carry additional survival equipment, such as liferafts and 
        survival-type emergency locator transmitters to mitigate the 
        risks, and would benefit from the addition of safety technology 
        outlined in this Act.
            (13) As a result of the 2014 safety forum, the NTSB 
        formally issued safety recommendations to the Federal Aviation 
        Administration (referred to in this Act as the ``FAA''), 
        aligning with the ICAO regulations, to require that all newly 
        manufactured aircraft operating extended overwater operations 
        and operating under part 121 or part 135 of title 14, Code of 
        Federal Regulations, that are required to have a CVR and a FDR, 
        be equipped with a tamper-resistant method to broadcast 
        sufficient information to establish the location where an 
        aircraft terminates flight within 6 nm (A-15-001), an airframe 
        low-frequency ULD that will function for at least 90 days (A-
        15-002), and a secondary FDR/CVR system that enables the 
        recovery of mandatory flight data parameters without the need 
        for an underwater retrieval (A-15-003).
            (14) In support of commercial passenger safety and national 
        security, it is in the public's best interest that the FAA 
        initiate a formal rulemaking process to implement the NTSB's 
        Safety Recommendations A-15-001 through A-15-003 in order to--
                    (A) provide aviation safety investigators with 
                critical FDR and CVR data without the delays and cost 
                of underwater search and recoveries;
                    (B) achieve redundancy and maximize survivability 
                of the most important crash investigation tool equipped 
                on commercial passenger aircraft;
                    (C) ensure rapid recovery of the FDR and CVR data 
                for timely safety and security analysis in all crash 
                scenarios; and
                    (D) improve timely location of the aircraft, 
                accident site, and survivors.
            (15) The NTSB safety recommendations do not dictate the 
        technology that must be used to achieve these safety goals but 
        does cite at least two acceptable technologies to meet the 
        requirement, to include automatic deployable flight recorder 
        systems and transmission of flight recorder data systems.
            (16) Automatic deployable flight recorder systems combine a 
        FDR, CVR, and ELT into one crash-hardened, survivable ``black 
        box'', which releases from the aircraft upon crash impact with 
        land, or water, and in the event of in-air explosion, enabling 
        it to avoid the crash impact site and float indefinitely in 
        overwater accidents. The floating deployable recorder sends a 
        distress alert tracking signal to the free, global 
        constellation of Search and Rescue (SAR) satellite transponders 
        known as COSPAS-SARSAT, immediately providing the position of 
        the downed aircraft at point of impact to assist in the 
        location of survivors and the location of the floating 
        deployable FDR and CVR black box for rapid recovery and 
        analysis.
            (17) Transmission of flight recorder data involves 
        monitoring aircraft flight parameters and triggering satellite 
        transmission of critical flight data when the parameters 
        deviate from their normal operating envelope and can also 
        assist in identifying the location of a downed aircraft.
            (18) Use of either the automatic deployable flight recorder 
        or transmission of flight recorder data technologies, when used 
        to supplement the current mandatory onboard fixed FDR and CVR, 
        will provide investigators more timely access to information, 
        offering valuable insight into the circumstances at the end of 
        an accident flight while helping to focus an investigation 
        during the search for survivors, and recovery of traditional 
        fixed recorders and wreckage from underwater crash sites.
            (19) CVRs provide unique information with which the NTSB 
        can conduct more thorough investigations to target safety 
        recommendations more effectively. The current 2-hour CVR 
        standard recording duration has hampered safety investigations 
        because relevant portions of the recordings were overwritten. 
        In 2018, the NTSB issued Recommendation (A-18-30) calling for 
        the CVR recording requirement to be extended to 25 hours, which 
        will bring the U.S. into compliance with European Aviation 
        Safety Agency (EASA) and International Civil Aviation 
        Organization (ICAO) standards.

SEC. 3. REGULATIONS REQUIRING ADDITIONAL FLIGHT RECORDER SYSTEM AND 
              OTHER PURPOSES.

    (a) In General.--Not later than 1 year after the date of enactment 
of this Act, the Administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration 
shall issue such regulations as are necessary to require that all newly 
manufactured aircraft used in extended overwater operations and 
operating under part 121 or part 135 of title 14, Code of Federal 
Regulations, that are required to have a CVR and a FDR--
            (1) be equipped with a means to recover, at a minimum, 
        mandatory flight data parameters that does not require 
        underwater retrieval;
            (2) be equipped with a tamper-resistant method to broadcast 
        to a ground station sufficient information to establish the 
        location where an aircraft terminates flight as the result of 
        an accident within 6 nm of the point of impact; and
            (3) be equipped with an airframe low-frequency ULD that 
        will function for at least 90 days and that can be detected by 
        equipment available on military, search and rescue, and salvage 
        assets commonly used to search for and recover wreckage.
    (b) 25-Hour Requirement.--Not later than 1 year after the date of 
enactment of this Act, the Administrator of the Federal Aviation 
Administration shall issue such regulations as are necessary to require 
that all newly manufactured aircraft operating under part 121 or part 
135 of title 14, Code of Federal Regulations, that are required to have 
a CVR and a FDR be equipped to retain at least the last 25 hours of 
recorded information.
    (c) Schedule for Compliance.--In issuing regulations under 
subsections (a) and (b), the Administrator shall require the 
installation of the additional recorder system required under this 
section on commercial aircraft that are ordered by an air carrier on or 
after January 1, 2027.
    (d) Compliant Additional Flight Recorder System.--Compliant 
technologies must enable safety investigators to recover mandatory 
flight data parameters without requiring underwater recovery of the 
recording device. This requirement does not require a third combination 
FDR/CVR recording mechanism to satisfy the regulation. Compliant 
technologies can include an automatic deployable flight recorder 
system, transmission of flight recorder data, and other technologies.
    (e) Definitions.--In this Act:
            (1) Automatic deployable flight recorder system.--The term 
        ``automatic deployable flight recorder system'' means a flight 
        data recorder, cockpit voice recorder, and emergency locator 
        transmitter housed in one crash-protected, floatable unit that 
        meets the performance specifications for a deployable recorder 
        system under United States Federal Aviation Administration 
        Technical Standard Order 123c (CVR), Technical Standard Order 
        124c (FDR), and Minimum Operational Performance Specifications 
        for Deployable Recorders under EUROCAE ED-112A, and all 
        subsequent updates to such requirements.
            (2) Commercial passenger aircraft.--The term ``commercial 
        passenger aircraft'' means all airplanes of a maximum 
        certificated takeoff mass of over 27,000 kg and authorized to 
        carry more than 19 passengers as referenced in ICAO Annex 6, 
        Part I, Chapter 6, Paragraph 6.3.6.1.
            (3) Transmission of flight recorder data.--The term 
        ``transmission of flight recorder data'' means a system capable 
        of monitoring aircraft parameters and providing continuous 
        satellite transmission or the triggering of satellite 
        transmission of critical flight data when the parameters 
        deviate from their normal operating envelope and can also 
        assist in identifying the location of a downed aircraft. Data 
        should be captured from a triggering event until the end of the 
        flight and for as long a time period before the triggering 
        event as possible.
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