Safe Aviation and Flight Enhancement Act of 2023

Safe Aviation and Flight Enhancement Act of 2023

This bill directs the Federal Aviation Administration to issue regulations requiring all newly manufactured commercial aircraft used in certain extended overwater operations to have additional data recovery features.

Specifically, commercial aircraft that are required to have a cockpit voice recorder (CVR) and a flight data recorder (FDR) must be equipped with

• a means to recover flight data that does not require underwater retrieval,
• a tamper-resistant method to broadcast to a ground station sufficient information to establish the flight termination location within six nautical miles of the point of impact, and
• an airframe low-frequency underwater locating device that will function for at least 90 days and that is detectable by current search and rescue systems.

Further, the commercial aircraft must be equipped to retain at least the last 25 hours of recorded information.

Commercial aircraft that are ordered by an air carrier on or after January 1, 2027, must have the additional recorder system installed.

The bill specifies that a third combination CVR/FDR recording mechanism is not required to satisfy the bill's requirements. Compliant technologies may include (1) an automatic deployable flight recorder system (i.e., a CVR, FDR, and emergency locator transmitter housed in one crash-protected, floatable unit), and (2) transmission of flight recorder data (i.e., a system capable of providing satellite transmission of critical flight data that can also assist in identifying the location of a downed aircraft).