FAA recommends airlines ensure cockpit-voice recorder audio is preserved after incidents
US regulator issues voluntary recommendations after the NTSB had urged it to mandate the action. The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is recommending that airlines take steps to ensure cockpit-voice recorders (CVRs) retain relevant audio following safety incidents. On 1 July, the agency issued guidance calling on aircraft operators to confirm that their employee manuals instruct pilots and other workers to pull CVR circuit breakers following such events to preserve audio that would otherwise be overwritten. But the FAA’s guidance is “voluntary only” rather than mandating the action. It has been introduced in response to a 2025 recommendation from the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), which said many of its investigations have suffered from missing CVR audio and that airlines have “inconsistent” procedures. The NTSB had wanted operators to be forced to comply. “The FAA recommends that each operator who has a CVR installed confirm that company manuals contain instructions that the CVR circuit breaker be pulled after a reportable event,” the FAA says in a new Safety Alert for Operators. “The instruction that the CVR circuit breaker is pulled could be included in flight operation manuals, maintenance manuals and dispatch manuals, increasing the likelihood that the task is accomplished,” it adds. The NTSB has since the early 2000s flagged the problem of being unable to access CVR audio needed for investigations. However, many existing recorders retain only the prior few hours of audio, after which it is overwritten. Pilots can preserve audio by pulling the circuit breakers, and some airlines have already recommended that action, including Alaska Airlines, according to the NTSB. But in many cases flightcrew have not done so, such as with Alaska flight 1282, a Boeing 737 Max 9 that suffered an in-flight door-plug blow-out on 21 January 2024. From that aircraft, the NTSB recovered CVR audio starting 1h 20min after the incident, rendering the recording useless, according to its accident report. Its report recommended the FAA require airlines to instruct pilots to pull the breakers, calling the issue a “long-standing concern”. It cites previous similar cases, including two 2023 runway incidents and a 2017 Air Canada event. “Despite existing guidance on preserving CVR data, operators still lack effective measures to safeguard CVR recordings after accidents and reportable events,” the NTSB says. The agency declines to comment about the FAA’s guidance, saying it is still reviewing the document. The NTSB can classify recommendations as closed if it deems FAA action sufficient. Southwest Airlines says its pilot manuals already call for the CVR breakers to be pulled.