The pilots’ voices in the final seconds of a deadly cargo plane crash have been recreated by Internet detectives using software and AI tools. The dissemination of reconstructed audio recordings has prompted a US government agency to suspend all public access to its database of civilian transportation accidents – because federal law prevents investigators from publicly releasing audio from cockpit voice recorders.
The US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) commonly shares factual reports and evidence collected from investigations of aircraft accidents and other civilian transportation incidents. But on May 21, the NTSB announced that the online docket system containing such information was “temporarily unavailable” as it reviewed publicly available materials that had enabled people to reconstruct cockpit audio recordings from aircraft disasters.
According to an NTSB statement, “The NTSB is aware that advances in image recognition and computational methods have enabled individuals to reconstruct projections of cockpit voice recorder audio from sound spectrum imagery released as part of NTSB investigations, including the ongoing investigation of the crash of UPS Flight 2976 in Louisville, Kentucky last year.” “NTSB does not release cockpit audio recordings.”
UPS Flight 2976 was a United Parcel Service MD-11F cargo plane that crashed shortly after takeoff from Louisville, Kentucky on November 4, 2025, due to a structural failure that caused the engine to separate as the plane left the ground. Three pilots on board, including a relief pilot, died. Another 12 people on the ground died, while 23 were injured.
The US Congress enacted a federal law in 1990 prohibiting the NTSB from publicly sharing any portion of the cockpit voice or video recorder to protect the privacy of air crews. The law followed protests by airline pilots over a controversial TV station broadcast of a cockpit conversation related to the crash of Delta Air Lines Flight 1141 at Dallas–Fort Worth International Airport in August 1988.
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