• The vintage aircraft in Saturday’s deadly collision at a Dallas air show.
• The plane was not equipped with a flight data recorder.
• Dallas air show crash, which killed all six people on board.

The vintage aircraft in Saturday’s deadly collision at a Dallas air show, as expected, lacked flight data recorders, making social media crucial to the investigation, a federal official indicated Sunday.

National Transportation Safety Board member Michael Graham said at a news conference Sunday that the plane was not equipped with a flight data recorder or a cockpit data recorder.

Photos and videos of the Wings Over Dallas air show crash, which killed all six people on board, “may be very sensitive, because we don’t have flight data recorders,” he said.

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Although flight data recorders and other data devices, including cockpit recorders, are required for commercial airliners, they’re optional for most other air operations, including passenger, charter and tour flights in which digital devices are often must be adapted for mechanical flight control systems.

Neither aircraft was equipped with a Flight Data Recorder or Cockpit Voice Recorder—often known as a black box. They were also not required to be equipped with either an FDR or CVR.

— Michael Graham (@MikeGrahamNTSB) November 13, 2022

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The design of the Boeing B–17G Flying Fortress in Saturday’s collision is nearly 90 years old. The other, a Bell P-63 Kingcobra, was a design Russia used during World War II.

The NTSB has been calling for a broader mandate for flight data technology for decades, as it has evolved to become more powerful and less expensive.

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“The NTSB believes other types of passenger-carrying commercial aircraft, such as charter planes and air tours, should be equipped with data, audio, and video recording devices.

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