I 
118TH CONGRESS 
1ST SESSION H. R. 3634 
To direct the Administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration to issue 
regulations to improve flight recorder and aircraft crash location require-
ments on certain commercial passenger aircraft by requiring the installa-
tion of a second combination digital flight data and cockpit voice recorder 
system that enables data recovery without an underwater search and 
recovery. 
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 
MAY 24, 2023 
Mr. COHEN (for himself and Mr. BURCHETT) introduced the following bill; 
which was referred to the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure 
A BILL 
To direct the Administrator of the Federal Aviation Adminis-
tration to issue regulations to improve flight recorder 
and aircraft crash location requirements on certain com-
mercial passenger aircraft by requiring the installation 
of a second combination digital flight data and cockpit 
voice recorder system that enables data recovery without 
an underwater search and recovery. 
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representa-
tives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, 
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SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE. 
This Act may be cited as the ‘‘Safe Aviation and 
Flight Enhancement Act of 2023’’. 
SEC. 2. FINDINGS. 
Congress finds the following: 
(1) Flight data recorder (referred to in this Act 
as an ‘‘FDR’’) data and cockpit voice recorder (re-
ferred to in this Act as a ‘‘CVR’’) data, often re-
ferred to as ‘‘black box’’ data, on commercial pas-
senger aircraft is crucial in all aircraft crash inves-
tigations, providing vital information to determine 
the cause of an accident and to prevent future 
recurrences. 
(2) Underwater locating device (referred to in 
this Act as a ‘‘ULD’’) beacons generate a low oper-
ating frequency to increase signal detection range 
and improve signal transmissibility through aircraft 
structures to aid in the identification of aircraft 
wreckage. Airframe-mounted ULDs with a minimum 
operating life of 90 days will improve the underwater 
search for aircraft wreckage. 
(3) Aircraft equipped with a tamper-resistant 
method to broadcast to a ground station sufficient 
information to establish the location within 6 nau-
tical miles (referred to in this Act as ‘‘nm’’) of 
where an aircraft terminates flight will facilitate a 
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quicker identification of an accident location, a fast-
er search and rescue response, and a more effective 
search effort in remote locations and overwater acci-
dents. Use of an emergency locator transmitter (re-
ferred to in this Act as an ‘‘ELT’’), whether as a 
stand-alone unit or as part of an automatic 
deployable flight recorder, can transmit the location 
of an accident and provide a homing capability for 
search and rescue personnel. In addition, more fre-
quent broadcasts from data link communication sys-
tems are capable of reporting an aircraft’s position 
every minute to reduce the search area to a radius 
of less than 6 nm. 
(4) As the aviation environment grows more 
complex, to include a surge in air traffic, the inte-
gration of new manned and unmanned aerial and 
space vehicle activity, an increasingly dynamic na-
tional security environment, and the growth of ex-
tended overwater and remote location flight routes, 
it is imperative for air safety investigators to quickly 
locate a downed aircraft and survivors, and to have 
rapid access to secure black box data to enable and 
support the early identification of safety and secu-
rity issues, and the quick implementation of appro-
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priate preventative actions to address potential risks 
to the commercial aviation fleet. 
(5) Air crash victim families deserve assurances 
that search and rescue teams will have rapid access 
to a crash location’s site to speed survivor recovery 
efforts, and that victim families will have access to 
timely and factual information regarding the cause 
of an accident and the fate of their loved ones. 
(6) Hundreds of millions of dollars are unneces-
sarily expended, and significant time is wasted in ef-
forts to locate and recover traditional fixed ‘‘black 
boxes’’ in underwater crash investigations. 
(7) Existing, advanced flight recorder tech-
nologies are available today that will aid in the rapid 
location of an aircraft and potential survivors, while 
also providing safety investigators with timelier re-
covery of FDR/CVR data by avoiding accident inves-
tigation delays caused by prolonged underwater and 
remote location search operations. 
(8) Recent commercial passenger aircraft crash-
es involving United States and international manu-
factured aircraft have demonstrated the significant 
challenges and unnecessary delays safety investiga-
tors face in trying to locate and recover traditional 
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fixed black boxes from the bottom of the ocean, in-
cluding the following: 
(A) On March 8, 2014, Malaysia Airlines 
Flight 370, B–777–200ER, disappeared with 
239 passengers and crew. International search 
and recovery efforts for the aircraft and black 
boxes have involved 29 nations and hundreds of 
millions of dollars in resources, becoming the 
most expensive search and recovery mission in 
aviation history. Nine years later, the aircraft is 
still missing, and the cause of the crash is still 
unknown. 
(B) On June 1, 2009, Air France Flight 
447 crashed into the Atlantic Ocean with 216 
passengers and 12 crewmembers. Despite locat-
ing aircraft wreckage within 5 days, it still took 
nearly 2 years and an estimated cost of over 
$160,000,000 to recover the FDR and CVR 
from the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean at a 
depth of 12,000 feet. 
(C) On October 29, 2018, Lion Air 610 
became the first of two fatal B–737 Max 8 
crashes. Despite being in only 100 feet of 
water, it took investigators 77 days to locate 
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and recover the CVR, which provided critical in-
formation. 
(D) On July 2, 2021, Transair Flight 810, 
B–737–200, crashed off the coast of Mamala 
Bay, Oahu. While investigators knew the loca-
tion of the aircraft, it took 4 months to recover 
the FDR and CVR from the bottom of the 
ocean. 
(E) On January 9, 2021, Sriwijaya Air 
Flight 182, B–737–500, crashed into the Java 
Sea in a depth of only 89 feet, yet the recovery 
of the CVR still took 81 days. 
(F) On June 30, 2009, Yemenia Airlines 
IY626 crashed off of the coast of Comoros, with 
152 passengers and aircrew. The sole survivor, 
a 12-year-old girl, was found clinging to wreck-
age after floating in the ocean for 13 hours. 
Her accounts shared that more passengers sur-
vived the crash but succumbed to hypothermia 
due to the delay in locating the downed aircraft. 
The FDR and CVR were not recovered until 
nearly 2 months later, at a depth of 3,900 feet. 
(G) On January 1, 2007, Adam Air Flight 
574, carrying 102 passengers and aircrew, 
crashed off the coast of Indonesia. The FDR 
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and CVR were located within 1 month, but 
could not be recovered until 7 months later due 
to the difficulty of the underwater environment. 
The FDR and CVR were found at a depth of 
6,600 feet and 4,600 feet apart. 
(9) In 2012, the International Civil Aviation 
Organization (referred to in this Act as the 
‘‘ICAO’’) adopted a standard requiring all aircraft 
with a maximum certificated takeoff mass over 
15,000 kilograms (kg) for which a type certificate is 
issued on or after January 1, 2016, and which are 
required to be equipped with both a CVR and FDR, 
to be equipped with two combination FDR/CVR re-
corder systems. 
(10) In 2016, ICAO issued an additional ruling 
that as of January 2021, all new commercial aircraft 
types must be equipped with a means to recover 
flight recorder data in a timely manner. The intent 
for this standard is to enable authorities to recover 
at least one set of FDR/CVR data without the need 
for underwater searches or prolonged terrain 
searches. 
(11) On October 7, 2014, following the dis-
appearance of MH370 and the nearly 2-year search 
and recovery effort required to retrieve the black 
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boxes from Air France Flight 447, the National 
Transportation Safety Board (referred to in this Act 
as the ‘‘NTSB’’) convened the ‘‘Emerging Flight 
Data and Locator Technology Forum’’. The forum 
included government, industry, and investigative ex-
perts to discuss technologies that could be used to 
improve the location of aircraft wreckage and the 
timely recovery of flight data following accidents in 
remote locations or over water. 
(12) The NTSB has stated its highest concern 
is for aircraft that fly extended overwater operations 
outside of radar coverage because timely response 
and recovery of data are more challenging when an 
accident occurs in a remote area. Currently, aircraft 
that fly extended overwater operations must carry 
additional survival equipment, such as liferafts and 
survival-type emergency locator transmitters to miti-
gate the risks, and would benefit from the addition 
of safety technology outlined in this Act. 
(13) As a result of the 2014 safety forum, the 
NTSB formally issued safety recommendations to 
the Federal Aviation Administration (referred to in 
this Act as the ‘‘FAA’’), aligning with the ICAO 
regulations, to require that all newly manufactured 
aircraft operating extended overwater operations and 
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operating under part 121 or part 135 of title 14, 
Code of Federal Regulations, that are required to 
have a CVR and a FDR, be equipped with a tamper- 
resistant method to broadcast sufficient information 
to establish the location where an aircraft terminates 
flight within 6 nm (A–15–001), an airframe low-fre-
quency ULD that will function for at least 90 days 
(A–15–002), and a secondary FDR/CVR system 
that enables the recovery of mandatory flight data 
parameters without the need for an underwater re-
trieval (A–15–003). 
(14) In support of commercial passenger safety 
and national security, it is in the public’s best inter-
est that the FAA initiate a formal rulemaking proc-
ess to implement the NTSB’s Safety Recommenda-
tions A–15–001 through A–15–003 in order to— 
(A) provide aviation safety investigators 
with critical FDR and CVR data without the 
delays and cost of underwater search and recov-
eries; 
(B) achieve redundancy and maximize sur-
vivability of the most important crash investiga-
tion tool equipped on commercial passenger air-
craft; 
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(C) ensure rapid recovery of the FDR and 
CVR data for timely safety and security anal-
ysis in all crash scenarios; and 
(D) improve timely location of the aircraft, 
accident site, and survivors. 
(15) The NTSB safety recommendations do not 
dictate the technology that must be used to achieve 
these safety goals but does cite at least two accept-
able technologies to meet the requirement, to include 
automatic deployable flight recorder systems and 
transmission of flight recorder data systems. 
(16) Automatic deployable flight recorder sys-
tems combine a FDR, CVR, and ELT into one 
crash-hardened, survivable ‘‘black box’’, which re-
leases from the aircraft upon crash impact with 
land, or water, and in the event of in-air explosion, 
enabling it to avoid the crash impact site and float 
indefinitely in overwater accidents. The floating 
deployable recorder sends a distress alert tracking 
signal to the free, global constellation of Search and 
Rescue (SAR) satellite transponders known as 
COSPAS–SARSAT, immediately providing the posi-
tion of the downed aircraft at point of impact to as-
sist in the location of survivors and the location of 
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the floating deployable FDR and CVR black box for 
rapid recovery and analysis. 
(17) Transmission of flight recorder data in-
volves monitoring aircraft flight parameters and 
triggering satellite transmission of critical flight 
data when the parameters deviate from their normal 
operating envelope and can also assist in identifying 
the location of a downed aircraft. 
(18) Use of either the automatic deployable 
flight recorder or transmission of flight recorder 
data technologies, when used to supplement the cur-
rent mandatory onboard fixed FDR and CVR, will 
provide investigators more timely access to informa-
tion, offering valuable insight into the circumstances 
at the end of an accident flight while helping to 
focus an investigation during the search for sur-
vivors, and recovery of traditional fixed recorders 
and wreckage from underwater crash sites. 
(19) CVRs provide unique information with 
which the NTSB can conduct more thorough inves-
tigations to target safety recommendations more ef-
fectively. The current 2-hour CVR standard record-
ing duration has hampered safety investigations be-
cause relevant portions of the recordings were over-
written. In 2018, the NTSB issued Recommendation 
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(A–18–30) calling for the CVR recording require-
ment to be extended to 25 hours, which will bring 
the U.S. into compliance with European Aviation 
Safety Agency (EASA) and International Civil Avia-
tion Organization (ICAO) standards. 
SEC. 3. REGULATIONS REQUIRING ADDITIONAL FLIGHT RE-
CORDER SYSTEM AND OTHER PURPOSES. 
(a) IN GENERAL.—Not later than 1 year after the 
date of enactment of this Act, the Administrator of the 
Federal Aviation Administration shall issue such regula-
tions as are necessary to require that all newly manufac-
tured aircraft used in extended overwater operations and 
operating under part 121 or part 135 of title 14, Code 
of Federal Regulations, that are required to have a CVR 
and a FDR— 
(1) be equipped with a means to recover, at a 
minimum, mandatory flight data parameters that 
does not require underwater retrieval; 
(2) be equipped with a tamper-resistant method 
to broadcast to a ground station sufficient informa-
tion to establish the location where an aircraft ter-
minates flight as the result of an accident within 6 
nm of the point of impact; and 
(3) be equipped with an airframe low-frequency 
ULD that will function for at least 90 days and that 
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can be detected by equipment available on military, 
search and rescue, and salvage assets commonly 
used to search for and recover wreckage. 
(b) 25-HOUR REQUIREMENT.—Not later than 1 year 
after the date of enactment of this Act, the Administrator 
of the Federal Aviation Administration shall issue such 
regulations as are necessary to require that all newly man-
ufactured aircraft operating under part 121 or part 135 
of title 14, Code of Federal Regulations, that are required 
to have a CVR and a FDR be equipped to retain at least 
the last 25 hours of recorded information. 
(c) SCHEDULE FOR COMPLIANCE.—In issuing regu-
lations under subsections (a) and (b), the Administrator 
shall require the installation of the additional recorder sys-
tem required under this section on commercial aircraft 
that are ordered by an air carrier on or after January 
1, 2027. 
(d) COMPLIANT ADDITIONAL FLIGHT RECORDER 
SYSTEM.—Compliant technologies must enable safety in-
vestigators to recover mandatory flight data parameters 
without requiring underwater recovery of the recording de-
vice. This requirement does not require a third combina-
tion FDR/CVR recording mechanism to satisfy the regula-
tion. Compliant technologies can include an automatic 
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deployable flight recorder system, transmission of flight 
recorder data, and other technologies. 
(e) DEFINITIONS.—In this Act: 
(1) AUTOMATIC
DEPLOYABLE
FLIGHT
RE-
CORDER SYSTEM.—The term ‘‘automatic deployable 
flight recorder system’’ means a flight data recorder, 
cockpit voice recorder, and emergency locator trans-
mitter housed in one crash-protected, floatable unit 
that meets the performance specifications for a 
deployable recorder system under United States 
Federal Aviation Administration Technical Standard 
Order 123c (CVR), Technical Standard Order 124c 
(FDR), and Minimum Operational Performance 
Specifications 
for 
Deployable 
Recorders 
under 
EUROCAE ED–112A, and all subsequent updates 
to such requirements. 
(2) COMMERCIAL PASSENGER AIRCRAFT.—The 
term ‘‘commercial passenger aircraft’’ means all air-
planes of a maximum certificated takeoff mass of 
over 27,000 kg and authorized to carry more than 
19 passengers as referenced in ICAO Annex 6, Part 
I, Chapter 6, Paragraph 6.3.6.1. 
(3) TRANSMISSION
OF
FLIGHT
RECORDER 
DATA.—The term ‘‘transmission of flight recorder 
data’’ means a system capable of monitoring aircraft 
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parameters and providing continuous satellite trans-
mission or the triggering of satellite transmission of 
critical flight data when the parameters deviate from 
their normal operating envelope and can also assist 
in identifying the location of a downed aircraft. Data 
should be captured from a triggering event until the 
end of the flight and for as long a time period before 
the triggering event as possible. 
Æ 
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