[SgtBob]

I understand the continued necessity of the black box as a signal-beacon should something go wrong and the plane needs to be found, but doesn’t the technology exist to transmit all flight data in real-time?

Emergency Locator Transmittor...beacon

"Black Box"...flight data recorder

Two different pieces of equipment.

[fiftymegaton]

Thanks for the clarification. I always just assumed the Emergency beacon was housed in the same Black Box container as the data recorder.

I think the black box data recorder will be nothing more than a backup system, if the technology that tcrlaf mentioned earlier in the thread ever comes online.