UAE's General Civil Aviation Authority (GCAA) has set up a Flight Data and Cockpit Voice Recorders (FDR and CVR, known as black boxes or flight recorders) Laboratory in its Abu Dhabi headquarters.

The equipment and systems of the laboratory were provided by a specialised company named “CAE Flightscape”, while a one week user’s concentrated training was conducted for the GCAA’s air accident investigators. The full run is expected to be in June.

“This highly qualified laboratory will not only be an essential tool for air accident and incident investigations, but it will also be useful for analyzing air safety issues in order to enhance aviation safety in the UAE,” said Saif Mohammed Al Suwaidi, director general, GCAA.

“The features of the system are not limited to downloading the data from the flight recorders, but allow the user to import the data and perform insight analysis, providing a real-time flight animation, and analysing multi channel audio recordings captured by the CVR which come from conversation between the flight crew, radio communications with the ATC, and any sounds generated by the aircraft engine, control switches and levers, system warnings and announcements, etc.,” added Ismaeil Abdel Wahed, executive director of Aviation Investigation.-TradeArabia News Service