The head of Taiwan’s Transportation Safety Board, an independent agency responsible for investigating major transportation accidents, told CNA on Sunday that it will expand its flight recorder or “black box” decoding capabilities to help investigate the cause of more military aircraft crashes.
Young Hong-tsu (???), chair of the Taiwan Transportation Safety Board (TTSB), said the TTSB has the ability to decode the data files of all kinds of flight recorders of Taiwan-based civilian airliners and convert them into readable output.
However, Young said the TTSB only has the capability to decode the black box data of the military’s UH-60M Black Hawk helicopters.
This is why during previous military aircraft crashes concerning other military aircraft models, such as F-16s, Mirage-2000s and Apache attack helicopters, the TTSB could only help the Ministry of National Defense (MND) reconstruct trajectory, process radar data and make estimations on the potential point of impact.
To elevate its flight incident investigation capabilities, Young said the TTSB is now in talks with the MND with the aim of expanding its black box decoding capabilities to cover all types of aircraft Taiwan’s military has.
This will enable the TTSB to better assist the MND in investigating future crashes involving military aircraft other than the Black Hawks should the MND make such a request, said Young, who made the remarks during an interview with CNA before the TTSB marks its third anniversary on Monday since its founding in Aug. 1, 2019.
Over the past months, lawmakers have been calling on amending the Transportation Occurrences Investigation Act to allow the TTSB to investigate military aircraft crashes as well, but the MND has so far denied such a request, citing confidential reasons involving national security.
Lawmakers criticized that the MND’s own investigations into such incidents have rarely been made public.
The TTSB is established by the Executive Yuan to independently and impartially investigate major transportation incidents, including aviation, railway, marine, and highway accidents. It was formally known as the Aviation Safety Council, which was founded in March 1998 and was responsible only for aviation related accident investigations.
According to the Transportation Occurrences Investigation Act, TTSB is only responsible for investigating transportation incidents involving civil aircraft and public aircraft, not military aircraft belonging to the MND.
However, Young told CNA that the board has signed an MOU with the MND about 10 years ago when it was known as the Aviation Safety Council, which allows the board to assist the MND when there is an accident involving military aircraft.
Meanwhile, Young added that the TTSB also aims to recruit retired experts from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in the United States and Taiwan military’s top research unit, National Chung-Shan Institute of Science & Technology, as part of Taiwan’s ongoing venture into the space industry.
TTSB, which is currently headquartered in a small office at New Taipei City Xindian District’s Dapinglin Joint Development Building, is also looking forward to relocating to a much bigger, 19,834-square-meter site, to cater to the needs of increasing demands on transportation incident investigations, according to Young.
The new site, set at northeastern Taiwan’s Yilan Science Park, is expected to cost the country NT$1.78 billion (US$ 59.3 million), and is pending the government’s approval, Young said.
Source: Focus Taiwan News Channel