The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has successfully recovered the black boxes — including the cockpit voice recorder (CVR) and flight data recorder (FDR) — of the ill-fated UPS Airlines Flight 2976, with the agency saying that it has fully pulled the cockpit audio from their charred remains. According to the NTSB’s YouTube briefing, it secured over 2 hours of digitally recorded audio, including the last 25 seconds of the flight during which the accident sequence occurred. Below are also images of the black boxes throughout the data forensics process.
NTSB Media Briefing 3 - UPS MD-11 Cargo Aircraft Crash, Louisville, KY - YouTube Watch On
“The cockpit voice recorder contained two hours and four minutes of what we consider good quality digital recorded audio. In reviewing that audio, the crew completed their standard checklists and briefings in preparation for the flight,” said NTSB Member Todd Inman, one of the five officials leading the investigative agency. He also added, “About 37 seconds after the crew called for takeoff thrust, a repeating bell was heard on the CVR, which persisted until the end of the recording 25 seconds later. During this time, the crew engaged in efforts to attempt to control the aircraft before the crash.”
The CVR and FDR are data recording devices mandated by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) for installation on all commercial aircraft. These are more popularly known as black boxes, although they are actually painted bright orange to make them easier to find in the debris field of any crash. Unfortunately, the recovered black boxes were severely charred black due to the intensity of the post-crash fire.
NTSB investigators open the crash survivable memory unit of the cockpit voice recorder recovered from the UPS MD-11 freighter that crashed Tuesday in Louisville, Kentucky. The work was performed in the NTSB vehicle recorder laboratory in Washington. (Source: NTSB) pic.twitter.com/3yrSGf2Y9ONovember 6, 2025
(Click 'See More' on the above tweet to see the embedded images of the black box.) These devices used magnetic tape when they were first introduced in the 1960s, but were eventually replaced by solid-state memory (SSDs) starting in the 1990s. This made them far more robust, allowing these units to safeguard the recorded data even in the most violent of events.
Once recovered, they assist the investigating body in determining the cause of the crash. The FDR records up to 25 hours of critical aircraft systems, and could include altitude, airspeed, heading, and over a thousand other parameters. In the meantime, CVRs record more than just the voices of the flight crew — instead, they capture everything audible in the cockpit, including aural warnings and other environmental sounds. These two devices have helped authorities solve mysteries time and again, allowing them to improve the entire aviation industry across the globe.
An NTSB recorder specialist closely examines the circuit card assembly from the cockpit flight recorder recovered from the UPS MD-11 freighter that crashed Tuesday. The assembly contains the memory protected by the recorder's crash-survivable design. The work was performed in the… pic.twitter.com/bxbfdvs0mDNovember 6, 2025
Even though the NTSB has already extracted UPS 2976’s CVR, it’s not releasing it to the public until the entire investigation is complete. Inman said that a team of experts on the MD-11, the model of the accident aircraft, will review the recording and output a transcript.
NTSB B-Roll: Aerial view of UPS Cargo Airplane Crash Scene in Louisville, KY https://t.co/XKOeXaDIgvNovember 7, 2025
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