Black boxes, also known as flight recorders, are crucial to aviation safety. They are designed to withstand extreme conditions and record various types of flight data, as well as cockpit audio .

Current Federal Aviation Authority regulations only require black boxes to record two hours of flight audio, including pilots’ voices, any incoming or outgoing radio transmissions or any engine ...

Other theories include the boxes turning black when they get charred in a crash, the Smithsonian Magazine wrote in 2019. “The truth is much more mundane,” the magazine wrote.

For example, black boxes of an Air France flight that crashed in the Atlantic Ocean in 2009 were found two years later from a depth of more than 10,000 feet, and technicians were able to recover ...