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Last weekend's This American Life was about death and one of the segments was a guy who compiled transcripts from the cockpit voice recorders from some number of plane crashes.
It was interesting but one segment that he read was the technical back and forth of them trying to save the plane and then right before the recording ends the co-pilot says "I love you Ann."
Even read in transcript form it was very moving and Lani was crying in the car (as she did again at another one where a Turkish pilot started singing a lullaby once it became clear his fate was unavoidable).
But apparently this is the only transcript in the book that included such personal statements by the cockpit crew so Ira Glass asked about that. It turns out that the NTSB redacts the transcripts to remove personal and emotional statements unless it bears directly on the technical issues at hand. Those are released to the families if they want to hear it but otherwise it is considered private.
I have no interest in hearing these 9/11 calls. It would just be a morbid voyeurism that I don't think I could stomach. They should be released to families if they want them. Information useful for future training should be gleaned, but I can't think of any actual news value in playing these tapes for general consumption.
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