Forensic examiners extract data from multiple systems aboard a modern aircraft to reconstruct flight events:
- Flight Data Recorder (FDR) & Cockpit Voice Recorder (CVR): Commonly known as "black boxes," these devices are engineered to survive extreme impacts, fires, and deep-sea pressure. Forensic recovery involves opening the armored chassis in a cleanroom environment to desolder and read memory chips directly if standard interfaces are destroyed.
- Electronic Flight Bags (EFBs): Modern pilots use commercial or ruggedized tablets (such as iPads or specialized Windows tablets) for navigation, flight planning, and weight/balance calculations. Standard mobile forensic tools extract application data, flight paths, and manual overrides from these devices.
- Airborne Image and Radar Sensors: Systems like terrain-awareness cameras, weather radars, and optical sensor modules store historical telemetry and environmental tracking logs.
- Avionics & Flight Management Computers (FMC): The core computing brains of an aircraft log non-volatile memory parameters, waypoint changes, autopilot states, and system faults that may not be captured by the main FDR.
