# List of unrecovered and unusable flight recorders

This article provides a list of aircraft accidents and incidents for which flight data recorders (FDRs) and cockpit voice recorders (CVRs) were not recovered or were destroyed or otherwise failed to provide complete and correct information.
FDRs and CVRs in commercial aircraft continuously record information and can provide key evidence in determining the causes of an aircraft loss. The greatest depth from which a flight recorder has been recovered is 16,000 feet (4,900 m), for the CVR of South African Airways Flight 295. Most flight recorders are equipped with underwater locator beacons to assist searchers in recovering them from offshore crash sites, however these beacons run off a battery and eventually stop transmitting. For various reasons, a flight recorder cannot always be recovered, and some recorders that are recovered are too damaged to provide any data. Some recorders have also failed to provide adequate information for various other reasons, such as poor maintenance, disconnection from their source of power, or having relevant information erased by the recording of later events.
| Crash date | Flight | Airline | Plane | Presumed location | Broad cause | Notes |
| 1961-09-17 | 706 | Northwest Airlines | Lockheed L-188 Electra | O'Hare International Airport, Illinois, United States | Accident | The FDR was destroyed by the impact. |
| 1965-08-16 | 389 | United Airlines | Boeing 727-100 | Lake Michigan, off Chicago, Illinois, United States | Accident | FDR was fragmented by the impact; parts of the outer cover were found but the foil tape containing the data was not. |
| 1966-03-05 | 911 | British Overseas Airways Corporation | Boeing 707-400 | Mount Fuji, Japan | Accident | The FDR was destroyed by a post-crash fire. The airplane did not carry a CVR (and was not required to have one). |
| 1966-04-22 | 280/D | American Flyers Airline | Lockheed L-188 Electra | Ardmore Municipal Airport, Oklahoma, United States | Accident | The FDR had suffered a mechanical failure unrelated to the accident and may not have been properly checked by the flight engineer before the flight; it had produced no recording for the flight. The airplane did not have a CVR (and was not required to have one). |
| 1966-08-06 | 250 | Braniff International Airways | BAC 1-11-203AE | Richardson County, Nebraska, United States | Accident | The FDR was destroyed in the crash. |
| 1966-10-01 | 956 | West Coast Airlines | Douglas DC-9-14 | Near Wemme, Oregon, United States | Accident | The CVR was destroyed by a post-crash fire. |
| 1966-11-15 | 708 | Pan American World Airways | Boeing 727-100 | Near Dallgow in former East Germany | Probable accident (disputed) | The plane crashed in East German territory during the Cold War; only half of the wreckage was relinquished by authorities. The fate of the CVR and FDR is unknown. |
| 1969-09-21 | 801 | Mexicana de Aviación | Boeing 727-100 | Near Mexico City International Airport in Mexico City, Mexico | Accident | The plane crashed on the final approach; the FDR yielded no data as it was improperly installed by technicians two days prior. The CVR was removed by the same technicians two days prior to the crash and was never replaced. |
| 1970-02-05 | 603 | Dominicana de Aviación | Douglas DC-9-32 | Caribbean Sea, near Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic | Accident | Neither flight recorder was ever found. |
| 1970-05-02 | 980 | ALM Antillean Airlines | Douglas DC-9-33CF | Caribbean Sea | Accident | Resting at a water depth of 5,000 ft (1,500 m); neither recorder was found. |
| 1971-06-06 | 706 | Hughes Airwest | Douglas DC-9-31 | San Gabriel Mountains near Los Angeles, California, United States | Accident | The CVR was destroyed by a post-crash fire. |
| 1971-07-30 | 845 | Pan American World Airways | Boeing 747-100 | San Francisco International Airport, California, United States | Accident | The CVR recording was overwritten by other recordings. |
| 1972-06-29 | 290 | North Central Airlines | Convair CV-580 | Lake Winnebago, near Appleton, Wisconsin, United States | Accident | One of two aircraft involved in the 1972 Lake Winnebago mid-air collision. An estimated 50% to 60% of the wreckage was recovered from the shallow, muddy water. The FDR was found in good condition, but no CVR was found. |
| 1972-12-08 | 553 | United Airlines | Boeing 737-200 | Near Midway International Airport, Illinois, United States | Accident | The FDR was inoperative due to the mechanical malfunction of an internal gear wheel that occurred 14 minutes before the accident. The CVR recorded a cockpit discussion of the FDR fault, which may have been a distraction for the crew. |
| 1973-07-22 | 816 | Pan American World Airways | Boeing 707-320B | Pacific Ocean, off Papeete, Tahiti | Accident | Resting at a water depth of 700 m (2,300 ft); neither recorder was found. |
| 1973-08-28 | 742 | Trans World Airlines | Boeing 707-320B | Pacific Ocean near Los Angeles, United States | Accident | CVR overwritten by other recordings. |
| 1974-09-08 | 841 | Trans World Airlines | Boeing 707-320B | Ionian Sea, near Greece | Bomb | Resting at a water depth of 3,164 m (10,381 ft). By the time the main wreckage was located, conclusive evidence of a bomb explosion had been found, and it was decided that whatever additional information the recorders held would not justify the cost and difficulty of recovering them. Neither of the recorders were ever found. |
| 1974-12-04 | 138 | Martinair | Douglas DC-8 | Maskeliya, Sri Lanka | Accident | FDR completely disintegrated by impact. Small fragments of the foil tape from the unit were recovered from the crash site, but all of the fragments were from the supply spool of the recorder, and thus did not contain any flight data. The aircraft did not carry a CVR. |
| 1975-09-30 | 240 | Malév | Tupolev Tu-154 | near the Lebanese shoreline | Unknown | Resting at a water depth between 600 and 1,000 m (2,000 and 3,300 ft); neither recorder was found. |
| 1975-11-12 | 032 | Overseas National Airways | McDonnell Douglas DC-10-30CF | John F. Kennedy International Airport, New York City, United States | Accident | The CVR was destroyed by a post-crash fire. |
| 1976-04-05 | 60 | Alaska Airlines | Boeing 727-100 | Ketchikan International Airport, Ketchikan, Alaska, United States | Accident | The CVR was destroyed by a post-crash fire. |
| 1976-08-15 | 232 | SAETA | Vickers Viscount 785D | Chimborazo volcano, Ecuador | Accident | Speculation surrounding the existence of both the FDR and the CVR followed the discovery of the plane's remains in 2002, after being lost for 26 years. Civil aviation authorities claimed it didn't carry any device, but a former SAETA pilot claimed that the Viscount had carried at least an FDR. A former SAETA executive also claimed that the plane was acquired with both devices. In the end, due to the crash site's high altitude, harsh weather, and inaccessible and remote location, it was declared a holy field (de facto and de jure graveyard) and no investigation was made into the causes of the crash. |
| 1976-10-13 | N730JP | Lloyd Aéreo Boliviano | Boeing 707-130F | El Trompillo Airport, Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Bolivia | Accident | The tape medium in the FDR had run out and was found wrapped around the receiving reel, so it was inoperative at the time of the accident. The CVR's cockpit area microphone was inoperative and did not record any useful information as a result. |
| 1977-09-02 | 3751 | Transmeridian Air Cargo | Canadair CL-44 | 2.5 Nautical Miles east of Waglan Island | Accident | Recovery was hampered by bad weather and poor visibility. Undersea cables in the area precluded the use of dredging equipment, making salvage operations very difficult. Only 25% of the wreckage was recovered after an extensive effort; the CVR and FDR were not found. |
| 1977-12-18 | 730 | SA de Transport Aérien | Sud Aviation Caravelle | 4 kilometers southeast of Funchal Airport, Portugal | Accident | Aircraft was located but largely not recovered from the sea, it was not stated in the accident report which types of flight recorders were carried, only that none were recovered. |
| 1977-12-18 | 2860 | United Airlines | Douglas DC-8F-54 | Near Kaysville, Utah, United States | Accident | The CVR had been inoperative for several days for reasons unrelated to the accident, and the preflight testing procedure failed to detect the malfunction. |
| 1978-03-01 | 603 | Continental Airlines | McDonnell Douglas DC-10 | Los Angeles International Airport, California, United States | Accident | The CVR was inoperative due to having a broken tape. The flight captain discovered the malfunction during a preflight check and requested a repair, but no repair was performed and the captain did not recheck it. The problem was not recorded in the aircraft logbook. |
| 1979-01-30 | 967 | Varig | Boeing 707-323C | Pacific Ocean, around 200 kilometers East Northeast of Tokyo, Japan | Unknown | The aircraft debris was never located and thus, neither the CVR and FDR was found and the cause of the crash was never determined. |
| 1979-04-04 | 841 | Trans World Airlines | Boeing 727-31 | Saginaw, Michigan, United States | Incident | The cockpit voice recorder was either deliberately cleared by the captain or had been damaged from the heavy G-force pullout after the incident. |
| 1979-05-25 | 191 | American Airlines | McDonnell Douglas DC-10-10 | Des Plaines, Illinois, United States | Accident | The separation of engine one caused the cockpit voice recorder to cut off and lose power one second later, causing the last 31 seconds of the crash to not be recorded. |
| 1980-03-14 | 007 | LOT Polish Airlines | Ilyushin Il-62 | Warsaw, Polish People's Republic | Accident | Both flight recorders were found, however, both devices stopped recording when their power connections were severed by flying debris or fire 26 seconds before the crash. |
| 1980-08-19 | 163 | Saudia | Lockheed L-1011 Tristar | Riyadh International Airport | Accident | The CVR stopped recording before the emergency landing due to fire damage. |
| 1980-12-23 | 162 | Saudia | Lockheed L-1011 Tristar | Over the Gulf of Bahrain | Accident | The CVR was overwritten and only contained conversations after the emergency landing. The FDR malfunctioned and recorded erroneous data. |
| 1981-05-07 | 901 | Austral Líneas Aéreas | BAC One-Eleven | Río de la Plata, near Buenos Aires, Argentina | Accident | Neither flight recorder was ever found. |
| 1981-05-24 | HC-BHG/FAE-723 | Ecuadorian Air Force flight, on behalf of the Ecuadorian Government | Beechcraft Super King Air | Huairapungo Hill, Loja Province, Ecuador | Accident (disputed) | The existence and possible whereabouts of the CVR and/or FDR have been disputed. High-ranking Air Force officers stated to a 1992 inquiry by the Congress of Ecuador that the black box equipment wasn't acquired with the plane because it was considered optional. The acquisition records also did not show that either device was acquired, and Beechcraft said it had no record of selling or providing either device. The head of the 1992 parliamentary inquiry criticized the Ecuadorian armed forces for cordoning off the area and removing debris without any judicial process or security protocols, and no CVR or FDR were revealed to have been found. |
| 1983-01-11 | 2885 | United Airlines | Douglas DC-8F-54 | Detroit Metropolitan Airport, Romulus, Michigan, United States | Accident | The FDR malfunctioned shortly after it was turned on, and resumed normal operation only about 15 seconds before the accident. |
| 1982-09-13 | 995 | Spantax | McDonnell Douglas DC-10-30CF | Málaga Airport, Málaga, Spain | Accident | The CVR was destroyed by a post-crash fire. |
| 1983-12-23 | 084 | Korean Air | McDonnell Douglas DC-10-30CF | Anchorage International Airport, Anchorage, Alaska | Accident | The FDR was inoperative at the time of the accident, and the CVR was not recovered.$^{:11}$ |
| 1985-01-01 | 980 | Eastern Air Lines | Boeing 727-225 | 25 nmi (46 km) from La Paz at the 19,600 ft (5,970 m) level of Andean peak Mt. Illimani. | Accident | Due to the extremely high altitude and inaccessibility of the accident location, the FDR and CVR could not be recovered. A team of three mountain climbers attempted to find the recorders in 2016, recovering part of the recorder mounting rack and a magnetic tape which they believed may have come from the CVR. The NTSB determined that the tape was not from a flight recorder. |
| 1985-01-21 | 203 | Galaxy Airlines | Lockheed L-188 Electra | Near Cannon International Airport, Reno, Nevada, United States | Accident | The recording tape of the FDR had run out and was found on the receiving spool sealed with a piece of transparent tape; the aircraft had been operated improperly for 117 hours after the tape had run out. |
| 1985-02-19 | 006 | China Airlines | Boeing 747SP-09 | Pacific Ocean, near San Francisco, California, United States | Accident | The CVR was overwritten due to the aircraft being repaired and returned to service. |
| 1985-07-10 | 5143 | Aeroflot | Tupolev Tu-154B-2 | Uchkuduk, Uzbekistan (formerly Uzbek SSR) | Accident | The CVR was completely destroyed by impact, explosion, and a post-crash fire. |
| 1985-12-12 | 1285R | Arrow Air | Douglas DC-8-63CF | Gander International Airport, Gander, Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada | Accident | The CVR was unusable as its cockpit area microphone was inoperative at the time of the accident and did not record any information. |
| 1987-11-28 | 295 | South African Airways | Boeing 747-200M | Indian Ocean, near Mauritius | In-flight fire | CVR located at a depth of 4,900 m (16,100 ft), but the quality of the audio was very poor and only the last 30 minutes were recorded. In that, much of the conversation was unknown and the tape stopped when the emergency began, possibly due to the fire burning the wires to the CVR. FDR not found. |
| 1987-11-29 | 858 | Korean Air | Boeing 707-320C | Andaman Sea | Bomb | Neither flight recorder was ever found. |
| 1988-07-03 | 655 | Iran Air | Airbus A300 | Persian Gulf | Shootdown | Neither flight recorder was ever found. |
| 1989-03-10 | 1363 | Air Ontario | Fokker F28-1000 | Dryden Regional Airport, Dryden, Ontario, Canada | Accident | CVR and FDR destroyed by post-crash fire. |
| 1989-09-08 | 394 | Partnair | Convair CV-580 | Sea, near Copenhagen, Denmark | Accident | Both recorders were found. The CVR had stopped working just before takeoff due to a faulty modification of its power connection. The FDR was an antiquated model and had not been operating properly over a period of several years and especially in recent months, partly related to vibrations resulting from the use of counterfeit bolts, and it yielded distorted and incomplete data. |
| 1990-01-25 | 052 | Avianca | Boeing 707 | Cove Neck, New York, United States | Accident | The foil recording medium used in the FDR had run out and been taped in place at some time before the flight, so it was inoperative at the time of the accident. |
| 1990-09-11 | OB-1303 | Faucett Perú | Boeing 727-200 | Atlantic Ocean, 350 miles southeast of Cape Race, Newfoundland, Canada | Accident | The plane and all sixteen aboard were lost, along with the CVR and FDR. The aircraft was being returned to Peru after lease to Air Malta. The crew reported a low fuel notice and that they were preparing to ditch. |
| 1991-05-26 | 004 | Lauda Air | Boeing 767-300ER | Phu Toei National Park, Suphan Buri Province, Thailand | Accident | The FDR was destroyed by a post-crash fire. |
| 1991-07-11 | 2120 | Nigeria Airways (operated by Nationair Canada) | Douglas DC-8-61 | 1.6km (1mi) from King Abdulaziz International Airport, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia | In-flight fire | CVR ceased operating as part of the cascading failure caused by the extreme in-flight fire. |
| 1992-01-03 | 4821 | CommuteAir | Beechcraft 1900 | Gabriels, New York, United States | Accident | The CVR was destroyed by a post-crash fire. The airplane did not have an FDR and was not required to carry one. |
| 1992-01-20 | 148 | Air Inter | Airbus A320-100 | Mont Sainte-Odile | Accident | The FDR was destroyed by a post-crash fire. |
| 1992-06-06 | 201 | Copa Airlines | Boeing 737-200 Advanced | Darien Gap, near Tucuti, Panama | Accident | Both recorders were found, but the CVR tape was broken in several pieces, and the recording recovered from it was from a different flight. |
| 1992-09-10 | 015 | Expreso Aéreo | Fokker F27-500 | Bellavista airstrip, San Martín Region, Peru | Accident | The CVR's magnetic tape was found to have been burned by the post-crash fire. The FDR was found not to be working properly at the time of the crash, as the tape was not connected. |
| 1992-09-28 | 268 | Pakistan International Airlines | Airbus A300B4-203 | Kathmandu, Nepal | Accident | Both recorders were found, but no conversation could be heard on the CVR, rendering it unusable. |
| 1992-10-04 | 1862 | El Al | Boeing 747-200F | Groeneveen and Klein-Kruitberg flats in the Bijlmermeer, Amsterdam Zuidoost | Accident | The FDR was found but was severely damaged, with the tape broken in four pieces; the CVR was not found. |
| 1992-11-24 | 3493 | China Southern Airlines | Boeing 737-300 | 12.5 miles south of Guilin Airport, China | Accident | The FDR was found but was severely damaged, with the tape being exposed to the post-crash fire; the CVR was not found. |
| 1992-12-07 | 012 | China Airlines | McDonnell Douglas MD-11 | 20 miles east of Japan | Incident | The CVR was overwritten by other recordings. |
| 1993-04-06 | 583 | China Eastern Airlines | McDonnell Douglas MD-11 | Near the Aleutian Islands, United States | Accident | The CVR, which used a continuous tape loop recording system, had a failure of its erasing function; it failed to erase previous recordings before recording new ones and instead superimposed new recordings along with the prior ones to produce a scrambled and degraded result, yielding no usable record. The nature of the failure was such that the maintenance personnel and flight crews could not detect that there was a problem by following ordinary procedures. |
| 1994-04-06 | 9XR-NN | Rwanda Government | Dassault Falcon 50 | 1 Nautical Mile East of Kigali Airport, Kigali, Rwanda | Shootdown | The whereabouts and even the existence of the CVR and/or FDR have been disputed. Multiple independent investigations were unable to determine the location of any flight recorders the aircraft may have carried. A proper examination of the crash site was not conducted until 15 years after the shootdown, by which time a majority of the wreckage had been displaced or scavenged. The manufacturer performed maintenance on the airplane a year before the crash, during which they documented that no recorders were installed (though mounting racks were in place for the operator to install them if they later decided to). Rwandan aviation laws at the time required all airplanes used for transporting the head of state to carry both a CVR and an FDR. The possibility that recorders were installed at some point between the work performed by Dassault and the shootdown has not been ruled out. |
| 1994-12-21 | 702P | Air Algérie, leased from Phoenix Aviation | Boeing 737-200 | Willenhall, Coventry, United Kingdom | Accident | The FDR had been working only intermittently, and did not record any data from the accident flight. |
| 1995-08-09 | 901 | Aviateca | Boeing 737-200 | San Vicente, El Salvador | Accident | The FDR was not found at the crash site, possibly scavenged from the site by locals. |
| 1995-12-03 | 3701 | Cameroon Airlines | Boeing 737-200 | Near Douala International Airport, Douala, Cameroon | Accident | Both recorders were destroyed in the crash.$^{:35}$ |
| 1995-12-20 | 41 | Tower Air | Boeing 747-100 | John F. Kennedy International Airport, New York City, United States | Accident | The FDR was inoperative during the accident due to a data acquisition unit problem. |
| 1996-02-29 | 251 | Faucett Perú | Boeing 737-200 | Ciudad de Dios, Cerro Colorado District, near Arequipa, Peru | Accident | The FDR was usable, but the partly-burned and partly-damaged CVR had its magnetic tape broken at its beginning and only recorded isolated Spanish-language voices, possibly made during maintenance duties. Thus there was no recording of the flight crew's final moments before the crash. The airline claimed to have acquired the CVR in mid-1995, and to have done maintenance on it in two occasions immediately prior to the crash; however, the CVR's interior showed December 1989 as the date of its last opening. |
| 1996-06-09 | 517 | Eastwind Airlines | Boeing 737-200 | Richmond International Airport, Richmond, Virginia, United States | Incident | CVR overwritten by other recordings. |
| 1996-10-22 | 406 | Millon Air | Boeing 707-320C | Manta, Ecuador | Accident | The FDR presented malfunctions that precluded precise and full readouts of its data. The device was reportedly retrofitted into the aircraft and also lacked adequate documentation. |
| 1997-12-06 | RA-82005 | Ukrainian Cargo Airways | Antonov An-124-100 | Mira Street, Irkutsk, Russia | Accident | The two flight recorders were in the center of the fire and were too badly damaged to provide meaningful data. |
| 1997-12-28 | 826 | United Airlines | Boeing 747-100 | Pacific Ocean | Accident | CVR overwritten by other recordings. |
| 1998-09-02 | 111 | Swissair | McDonnell Douglas MD-11 | Atlantic Ocean, southwest off Peggy's Cove, Nova Scotia, Canada | Accident | The CVR and FDR stopped functioning, likely due to fire affecting their supply of electrical power, 5 minutes and 37 seconds before impact. |
| 1998-09-29 | 602 | Lionair | Antonov An-24RV | Off the coast of Iranaitivu, Mannar District, Sri Lanka | Shootdown | No trace of either the FDR or the CVR was found among the 30% to 40% of the aircraft's wreckage that was salvaged in 2013. Only a highly corroded and damaged piece of debris was later identified as the auxiliary data recorder. |
| 1999-04-15 | 6316 | Korean Air Cargo | McDonnell Douglas MD-11 | Xinzhuang, Shanghai | Accident | FDR fragmented.$^{:9}$ |
| 1999-08-07 | 5002 | Cabo Verde Airlines | Dornier 228 | Santo Antão, Cape Verde | Accident | The CVR was destroyed by a post-crash fire. The airplane did not carry an FDR (and was not required to have one).$^{:45}$ |
| 1999-09-14 | 3838 | Olympic Airways for the Hellenic Air Force | Dassault Falcon 900B | Over Călinești, Teleorman, Romania | Accident | No data was recorded on the CVR, which had been unserviceable and in poor technical condition long before accident. The CVR tape was broken in two parts and showed strong abrasion, the magnetic recording heads were worn out, the maximum indication of the elapsed time (5000 hrs) was exceeded, and the cover seal was found broken. FDR data was partially available. Parameters for UTC, flight number and angle of attack were not properly recorded. The initial FDR readout had a 10–12% error rate and was refined to less than 2.5% in further analysis, but there remained several sub-frames of unreliable data in the relevant period, and at one point the data was briefly recorded as invalid shortly after upset recovery due to the reconnection of generator one and the battery, which were both accidentally disconnected during the accident. Required periodic FDR readout maintenance, which might have revealed the recording problems, was at least three years overdue.$^{:19,30–31,55}$ |
| 2000-01-30 | 431 | Kenya Airways | Airbus A310-300 | Atlantic Ocean, East of Félix-Houphouët-Boigny International Airport, Abidjan, Ivory Coast | Accident | The FDR had an electronic malfunction and had not been operating for more than 25 flying hours. The malfunction should have activated a warning light in the cockpit, and if the warning light had malfunctioned, this should have been detected by the crew during each routine pre-flight check. Operation of the plane with an FDR malfunction would not have been authorized on its previous flight, as that flight had been from an airport that had the ability to repair or replace the FDR. The technical log book was also not recovered, and copies of pages from the logbook which should have been left at the departing airport were not located. |
| 2000-05-21 | N16EJ | East Coast Aviation Services d/b/a Executive Airlines | British Aerospace Jetstream | Bear Creek Township, Pennsylvania, United States | Accident | The CVR did not record data from the accident flight. Although it was concluded that the CVR was capable of recording information, it had apparently never functioned since its installation on the airplane. The investigators could not determine why it did not operate, but concluded that a cockpit functional check should have indicated to flight crews that it was not operating. The airplane did not carry an FDR (and was not required to have one). |
| 2000-11-05 | 070 | Cameroon Airlines | Boeing 747-200 | Charles de Gaulle Airport, Paris, France | Accident | CVR overwritten by other recordings. |
| 2001-09-11 | 11 | American Airlines | Boeing 767-200ER | North World Trade Center, New York City, United States | Hijack | Neither flight recorder was ever found. |
| 2001-09-11 | 175 | United Airlines | Boeing 767-200 | South World Trade Center, New York City | Hijack | Neither flight recorder was ever found. |
| 2001-09-11 | 77 | American Airlines | Boeing 757-200 | Pentagon, Washington D.C., United States | Hijack | The CVR was too badly damaged by fire to provide any information. |
| 2001-10-04 | 1812 | Siberia Airlines | Tupolev Tu-154 | Black Sea | Shootdown | Resting at a water depth of 3,300 ft (1,000 m); neither recorder was found. |
| 2002-05-04 | 4226 | EAS Airlines | BAC One-Eleven 525FT | Mallam Aminu Kano International Airport, Kano, Nigeria | Accident | The FDR was recovered but inoperative; it had never been maintained by the airline and contained only recordings from flights carried out during its operation with previous airlines in Europe. The CVR was missing from the crash site. |
| 2002-07-28 | 9560 | Pulkovo Aviation Enterprise | Ilyushin Il-86 | Near Sheremetyevo International Airport, Moscow, Russia | Accident | The FDR lacked information on the primary and backup stabilizer control systems, and there was a lack of crew comments on the CVR. |
| 2003-05-25 | N844AA | Aerospace Sales & Leasing | Boeing 727 | Luanda, Angola | Unknown | Aircraft stolen, current whereabouts are unknown. |
| 2003-05-26 | 4230 | Ukrainian-Mediterranean Airlines | Yakovlev Yak-42 | Trabzon, Turkey | Accident | CVR was inoperative before the flight. The fuel indicator of the FDR was also not working. |
| 2004-10-14 | 1602 | MK Airlines | Boeing 747-200SF | Halifax Stanfield International Airport, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada | Accident | The CVR was exposed to extreme heat for an extended period which melted the recording tape. |
| 2005-02-03 | 904 | Kam Air | Boeing 737-200 | Pamir Mountains, Afghanistan | Accident | The crash site was located at a near inaccessible area of the Pamir Mountains. Most of the wreckage was buried in deep snow, and specialists had to clear landmines from the area before it could be accessed. The FDR was eventually found with extreme difficulty, but it did not contain data due to a pre-existing fault in the data acquisition unit. The CVR was never found, and at least one investigator was killed during the search. |
| 2005-09-05 | 091 | Mandala Airlines | Boeing 737-200 Advanced | Polonia International Airport, Medan, Indonesia | Accident | Both recorders were found, and the captain and first officer's audio channels were recorded well, but the cockpit area microphone signal on the CVR was of poor quality, consistent with an intermittent electrical connection in the wiring circuit. The signal had an excessive amount of electrically induced noise or hum. Although some sounds were recorded on that channel, it was not possible to reach definitive conclusions about some important sounds that should have been recorded. |
| 2005-10-22 | 210 | Bellview Airlines | Boeing 737-200 | Lisa Village, Ogun, Nigeria | Accident | Neither recorder was found. |
| 2005-12-19 | 101 | Chalk's Ocean Airway | Grumman G-73T Turbine Mallard | Miami Beach, Florida, United States | Accident | Not equipped with FDR; CVR recovered but nothing audible could be recovered from it. |
| 2006-08-13 | 2208 | Air Algérie | Lockheed C-130 Hercules | Piacenza, Italy | Accident | The aircraft carried an older FDR which was inoperative at the time of the accident. |
| 2007-11-30 | 4203 | Atlasjet | McDonnell Douglas MD-83 | Keçiborlu, Turkey | Accident | The CVR had been inoperative for 9 days before the crash. The FDR only recorded the first 14 minutes of the flight. No explanation was provided for why the FDR recording had stopped. |
| 2008-08-24 | 6895 | Iran Aseman Airlines | Boeing 737-200 Advanced | Manas International Airport, Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan | Accident | The FDR tape was damaged by fire, leading to a 13-second cut in data. The CVR was inoperative prior to the flight. It contained a recording of a previous flight on a different route with an unknown date. The CVR was also damaged by the fire. |
| 2009-10-21 | 2241 | Azza Transport | Boeing 707-330C | 2 miles north of Sharjah International Airport | Accident | Both the FDR and the CVR had not been maintained in operating order and had no usable recording medium in them. |
| 2009-10-21 | 188 | Northwest Airlines | Airbus A320-200 | Minnesota, United States | Incident | CVR overwritten by other recordings. |
| 2010-11-11 | ST-ARQ | Tarco Airlines | Antonov An-24 | Zalingei Airport, Zalingei, Sudan | Accident | Both the CVR and FDR had not been maintained or checked. The FDR did not contain any data and the CVR only contained 4 minutes of a recording from a different flight. |
| 2011-07-28 | 991 | Asiana Airlines | Boeing 747-400F | Korea Strait | Accident | The FDR was recovered but the memory module was missing, apparently having been separated from its chassis and carried away in rough water. The CVR was not recovered. |
| 2012-06-02 | 111 | Allied Air | Boeing 727-221F Advanced | Kotoka International Airport, Accra, Ghana | Accident | CVR quality was unusable. |
| 2012-06-03 | 0992 | Dana Air | McDonnell Douglas MD-83 | Iju-Ishaga, Lagos, Nigeria | Accident | Both recorders were recovered, but the FDR was destroyed. |
| 2012-12-09 | N345MC | Private Aircraft | Learjet 25 | Iturbide, Mexico | Accident | The FDR was recovered but with too much damage to yield any data. The CVR not found at crash site, and investigators could not determine whether the airplane was equipped with one at the time of the crash. |
| 2014-03-08 | 370 | Malaysia Airlines | Boeing 777-200ER | South Indian Ocean | Unknown | The plane and all 239 passengers and crew went missing, along with the CVR and FDR. |
| 2014-07-24 | 5017 | Air Algérie | McDonnell Douglas MD-83 | Near Gossi, Mali | Accident | CVR quality was unusable. |
| 2015-08-16 | 267 | Trigana Air | ATR 42-300 | Near Oksibil, West Papua, Indonesia | Accident | Both recorders were found, but the FDR, which had a history of maintenance problems, was inoperative at the time of accident. |
| 2015-09-05 | 071 | CEIBA Intercontinental | Boeing 737-800 | Atlantic Ocean, east of Tambacounda, Senegal | Accident | CVR overwritten by other recordings. |
| 2015-09-05 | 6V-AIM | Senegalair | Hawker-Beechcraft HS125-700A | Atlantic Ocean, west of Dakar, Senegal | Accident | Plane and all seven aboard crashed into the Atlantic Ocean after pilots fell victim to hypoxia. The CVR and the FDR were never recovered as the wreckage itself was not recovered. |
| 2020-01-23 | N134CG | Coulson Aviation | Lockheed EC-130Q Hercules | Peak View, New South Wales, Australia | Accident | The CVR did not record any data from accident flight. Inertia switches—which were designed to cut power to the CVR when a large deceleration force is detected—activated during landing on a training flight in May 2019 and cut power to the CVR. Aircraft did not carry an FDR.$^{:31–32}$ |
| 2020-05-22 | 8303 | Pakistan International Airlines | Airbus A320-214 | Model Colony, Karachi, Pakistan | Accident | The FDR stopped recording four minutes before crash due to loss of electrical power following dual engine and generator failure after belly landing and go-around. The CVR temporally stopped recording for eight seconds due to electrical failure, but started recording again after ram air turbine deployed.$^{:53}$ |
| 2021-07-06 | 251 | Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky Air | Antonov An-26B-100 | Palana, Russia | Accident | Both recorders were recovered, but the CVR was too badly damaged to retrieve data from it. |
| 2023-06-04 | N611VG | Private aircraft | Cessna Citation V | Mine Bank Mountain, United States | Accident | The CVR was not recovered. The airplane was not equipped with an FDR. |
| 2024-01-05 | 1282 | Alaska Airlines | Boeing 737 MAX 9 | Over Portland, Oregon, United States | Accident | The CVR, which had only a two-hour loop period, was not stopped after the plane landed, so the incident record was overwritten by other recordings. |
| 2024-12-29 | 2216 | Jeju Air | Boeing 737-800 | Muan International Airport, Muan County, South Jeolla Province, South Korea | Accident | Both recorders stopped recording four minutes before the crash, presumably due to loss of electrical power. |
| 2025-01-31 | 056 | Jet Rescue Air Ambulance | Learjet 55 | Castor Gardens, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S | Accident | The CVR stopped recording several years before accident flight and did not record any data from it. The aircraft was not required to carry an FDR. |