Guidance

Guidance on CVR recording inspections

Best practices for the inspection of CVR recordings to enable more consistent detection of potential defects in the CVR system.

Documents

Guidance on CVR recording inspections

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Details

The Cockpit Voice Recorder (CVR) system is installed on aircraft for the purpose of facilitating the investigation of accidents and incidents. For that purpose, the quality of the recordings should provide for a high level of intelligibility of speech and an accurate reproduction of the sounds and background noise audible in the cockpit.

The CVR recording inspection (a periodic regulatory and maintenance requirement) is performed in order to verify the audio quality of the CVR and to detect the potential defects of the CVR system (many of which have been highlighted during accident and incident investigations).

This document, written by the European Flight Recorder Partnership Group (an independent voluntary group of European (and United States) flight recorder experts from industry, safety investigation authorities and national aviation authorities that was formed to provide advice and opinion on flight recorder issues and practices to EASA), aims to promote best practises, illustrate what tests should be carried out and what issues looked for during an assessment, and propose clearer definitions for the assessment rating of ‘good’, ‘fair’ or ‘poor’.

Updates to this page

Published 8 October 2018

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