What the Black Box Really Tells Us

After a crash, one of the first questions is whether the black boxes have been found. There are two of them, painted bright orange despite the name: the flight data recorder, which logs what the airplane did, and the cockpit voice recorder, which keeps what the crew said and heard.

Cal Whitaker explains how investigators use those recordings to reconstruct an accident, what they can establish with confidence, and where the evidence runs out.