The Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA) wasted no time to voice its displeasure with the NTSB’s suggestion on Thursday that tamper-proof cockpit video recorders be installed on Part 121 aircraft. The Safety Board's recommendations, which focused on facilitating the tracking and locating of downed aircraft, favors an on-board system capable of storing the last two hours of a flight on video, as well as the ability to broadcast sufficient information to establish an impact point within six nautical miles.

ALPA president Tim Canoll said, “ALPA is deeply concerned that the recommendations the NTSB released today related to cockpit image recorders are a premature overreaction that do not fully evaluate consequences of the recommended actions." The association emphasized it has long favored “enhancing current systems to record more data of a higher quality as opposed to video images.”

Citing the two years of work needed to locate recorders from Air France Flight 447, as well as the continuing hunt for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, NTSB acting chairman Christopher Hart said, “Technology has reached a point where we shouldn’t have to search hundreds of miles of ocean floor in a frantic race to find these valuable boxes…lost aircraft should be a thing of the past.”