[yeukhon]

How many fatal crashes of commercial airliners with black boxes have ultimately not been root-caused?

I am not sure what you are trying to say.

The blackbox is like your log file on a server: the flight recorders (flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder) in aircraft, (wiki). So if you want to know what happened to the aircraft, whether after a fatal crash or after a hijack or after emergency landing, the blackbox is ultimately the best source. Don't forget there is a legal responsibility.

It is totally rational.

[dap]

I'm saying that if black boxes are sufficient to root-cause the vast majority of commercial airline crashes, what problem are we trying to solve by "rethinking" them? The only one I can think of is speeding up the process, but it's not clear that that's actually a real problem rather than just disappointing to someone in the news industry who wants answers within a few news cycles.

[jusben1369]

Yes I think you're on to something. The complaint is how long it takes to have a definitive answer. But I'm not sure how significant a problem that is. For relatives and friends it may create a little closure but probably not much given it doesn't change the main issue. It's possible that there could be data collected that, if modified on other planes, would reduce or remove the chance of a similar tragedy. It doesn't seem though like that is the case in any disaster to this point.