What are black boxes? How do they work?

As thousands of commercial flights take to the skies daily, sturdy boxes painted in bright orange hues are tucked away in aircraft fuselage.

Those boxes, better known as black boxes, record data during flights without interruption and hold crucial information in plane crashes like the fatal accident of an Air India aircraft on Thursday afternoon (June 12, 2025).

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In modern aircraft, there is a Cockpit Voice Recorder (CVR) and a Digital Flight Data Recorder (DFDR).

Generally, they are called black boxes even though they are painted with bright orange colour to ensure high visibility.