Why Not Put Cameras in the Cockpit‪?‬

Aircraft accident investigation all over the world has so far resorted to the conventional ‘black box’ comprising a cockpit voice recorder (CVR) and a flight data recorder (FDR). It is true that the black box significantly contributes to identifying causes of accidents but it often leaves a little thing to be desired. The voice of pilots involved in the accidents has sometimes been insufficient to be able to explain what exactly happened in the cockpit and to the pilots. It has not been rare that what the data gained from the FDR indicated was in discord with the voice of pilots. This discrepancy may only constitute a small part of the investigation, but it may also function as the weakest link the removal of which bridges the gap between many clues collected through the investigation. Such inconsistency and other unanswerable circumstances, which lead investigators into using ‘conditional’ sentences in a large portion of their report paper, can only be mitigated or, not impossibly, cleared by a third source of information: A picture. We believe that to see is to believe and benefits from visual information are undoubtedly immense when it comes to accident investigation. However, pilots, so-called the data subjects in the imagery, seem not to willingly agree with the notion aforementioned. They may be agreeing but reluctant to explicitly agree due to the fact that the imagery from black boxes can be used against them in a punitive way. If they admit that image recording in the cockpit is beneficial, I believe they already recognise the benefit, such consistent opposition to the mandatory installation of Air-born Image Recorder (hereinafter referred to as ‘AIR’) on the basis of the protection of ‘privacy’ should be thoroughly reviewed in a legal and a practical sense for the sake of public safety. This paper is about an argument whether their alleged privacy in the cockpit against the AIR can be justified. The purpose of the paper is to offer a legal basis for the likelihood of legislation on the mandatory installation of the AIR in the Republic of Korea.