Flight data recorder AIRS-400

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AIRS-400 is not compliant with ED-155 section 2-1.14.4. This portion of the standard requires that the recorder be bright orange in color with black letters that say “FLIGHT RECORDER.” In general, Appareo finds our customers prefer a less obvious, intrusive color for a product mounted within the cockpit in plain sight. It would be possible to create a variant of our AIRS that would be bright orange and marked in this manner, but Appareo finds that our customers believe it looks bad in the cockpit. AIRS-400 is significantly more survivable than our previous cockpit camera, Vision 1000. The product is not, however, compliant with ED-155 section 2-4.2.4. Compliance with the flame survivability standard requires the presence of a phase change material, a material that is used to absorb the heat energy in the event of a fire. The mass of phase change material that is necessary to absorb the amount of heat energy products are subjected to in this test is roughly four times the volume and four times the weight of AIRS-400. This creates a large, unattractive product package for mounting into the ceiling of a cockpit or flight deck. For a customer that requires ED-155 or ED-112 flame survivability, a recoverable memory module mounted in a more convenient location for a large, heavy product is the right architecture for deployment of a flight data recording system. This provides the optimal flight data acquisition capability, with a visually attractive and high-performing camera solution providing digital data to a large, less attractive, recoverable module buried out of sight in the aircraft.