AMERICAN AIRLINES BREACHES RECORDERS PROTOCOL

American Airlines is accused of violating protocol pertaining to the handling of aircraft flight recorders. Following any incident involving aircraft, airlines are required to submit the cockpit voice recorder and the digital flight data recorder immediately to the National Transportation Safety Board’s lab without accessing or changing the recorded information. When one of American Airlines aircraft ran off the end of the runway during snowy conditions at Jackson Hole Airport on December 29, the recorders were flown to Tulsa, where American Airlines’ technicians downloaded information from the digital flight data recorder. The cockpit voice recorder and the digital flight data