> You should ask instead why it is so expensive.

That is literally my question. I’m highlighting that 100k seems really high to make a system that opportunistically transmits data we are already capturing locally. Rather than a flippant “airplanes should be expensive”, why not ask what is the cheapest retrofit we can do that doesn’t change the safety profile. As I said, this system should not be in the critical path and shouldn’t be a required other than the airplanes should generally be maintaining it to be functional (i.e. the SLA can be 75-90% and still provide tremendous value instead of the 100% SLA target for flight critical components which is what that 100k price tag sounds like).

That this is something highlighted by crash investigators as something that would help in corner cases like incidents over the ocean is just gravy.

Also there's likely 200 accelerometers on board already. Onboard wifi is becoming ubiquitous. Perhaps an app that trades in wifi time for accelerometer time would be good trade-off. And wouldn't require tons of certification.