I 
108TH CONGRESS 
1ST SESSION H. R. 2632
To direct the Secretary of Transportation to issue a regulation requiring 
the installation of 2 combination cockpit voice recorder and digital flight 
data recorder systems in each commercial passenger aircraft, currently 
required to carry each of those recorders, and for other purposes. 
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 
JUNE 26, 2003
Mr. DUNCAN introduced the following bill; which was referred to the 
Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure 
A BILL 
To direct the Secretary of Transportation to issue a regula-
tion requiring the installation of 2 combination cockpit 
voice recorder and digital flight data recorder systems 
in each commercial passenger aircraft, currently required 
to carry each of those recorders, and for other purposes.
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representa-
tives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,
SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE. 
This Act may be cited as the ‘‘Safe Aviation and 
Flight Enhancement Act’’. 
SEC. 2. FINDINGS. 
Congress finds the following:
(1) The events of September 11, 2001, dem-
onstrated that the United States needs to do more 
to ensure the survivability and quick retrieval of crit-
ical flight data and cockpit voice recording units 
aboard commercial aircraft. 
(2) Increased national security threats to com-
mercial airliners demand that the United States do 
everything possible to better secure the safety of our 
passengers by ensuring the quick and complete re-
covery of critical flight data from commercial air dis-
asters for immediate analysis of potential terrorism 
and to avoid unnecessary grounding of our commer-
cial air fleet. 
(3) In light of new commercial aviation ad-
vances, including increased polar flights, increased 
air traffic overwater, and the onset of free flight, 
there is increased potential for more difficult loca-
tion and recovery of fixed flight recorder and cockpit 
voice recorder units. 
(4) Hundreds of millions of dollars are unneces-
sarily expended to locate and recover ‘‘black boxes’’, 
especially in underwater investigations, despite exist-
ing deployable recorder technology currently used by 
the United States Armed Forces, which would allow 
us to avoid such unnecessary and wasteful costs.
(5) It is in the public’s best interest to accom-
plish these improvements by implementing the 
March, 9, 1999, recommendations A–99–16 through 
A–99–18 of the National Transportation Safety 
Board, in addition to incorporating a combined cock-
pit voice recorder and digital flight data recorder 
system designed to eject from the rear of the air-
craft at the moment of an accident, so that the sys-
tem will avoid the direct impact forces of the crash, 
avoid becoming ensnarled in the wreckage or fire in-
tensity of the crash site, and float indefinitely on 
water. 
(6) The Navy’s successful experience since 1993 
with deployable technology indicates that transfer of 
this technology into the commercial sector provides 
an obvious way to help us meet our goals to increase 
the survivability and retrieval of recorders while re-
ducing the time and cost of a mishap, investigation, 
search, rescue, and recovery. 
(7) Valuable time is lost searching for fixed 
flight data recorders in the wreckage of a crash site, 
especially at the bottom of the ocean, and critical 
data is unnecessarily lost in incidents in which the 
aircraft’s electrical supply is prematurely interrupted 
or the black boxes do not survive the crash cir-
cumstances, as is evident in reviewing some of our 
most recent and devastating air incidents, the in-
cluding the following: 
(A) Neither flight data or cockpit voice re-
corder was recovered from American Airlines 
Flight 11 and United Airlines Flight 175 that 
were used in the World Trade Center attacks 
on September 11, 2001. 
(B) It took 3 days to recover the flight 
data and cockpit voice recorders from American 
Airlines Flight 77 that was used in the Pen-
tagon attack on September 11, 2001. In addi-
tion, the cockpit voice recorder was damaged 
beyond repair, rendering no information. 
(C) It took 13 days to locate the cockpit 
voice recorder and 9 days to recover the flight 
data recorder from the air disaster involving 
Egypt Air Flight 990 in the vicinity of Nan-
tucket, Massachusetts, air disaster on October 
31, 1999. 
(D) With respect to Swiss Air Flight 111 
International in Halifax, Canada, on September 
2, 1998, the cockpit voice recorder stopped
nearly 6 minutes before the airplane hit the 
water, and it took search teams 9 days to locate
the cockpit voice recorder and 4 days to recover 
the flight data recorder. 
(E) The cockpit voice recorder and flight 
data recorder stopped about 40 to 50 seconds 
before the Valuejet Flight 592 crashed on its 
way back to the Miami, Florida, airport on May 
11, 1996. It took 15 days to recover the cockpit 
voice recorder, and 2 days to recover the flight 
data recorder from such flight because the un-
derwater locator beacon failed. 
(F) With respect to TWA Flight 800 
which exploded and crashed in the vicinity of 
Moriches, New York, on July 17, 1996, the 
cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder 
stopped at the time of the explosion, even 
though the airplane did not hit the water for 
another 40 to 50 seconds, and it took 7 days 
to recover such recorders. 
SEC. 3. REGULATIONS REQUIRING DEPLOYABLE RECORD-
ERS AND OTHER PURPOSES. 
(a) IN GENERAL.—Chapter 447 of title 49, United 
States Code is amended by adding at the end the fol-
lowing: 
‘‘§ 44727. Installation of additional flight recorders 
‘‘(a) REGULATIONS.—