I saw this interesting article on Al Jazeera news today and this piece of vocabulary caught my attention:
Bouillard said the search for the flight recorders, or “black boxes“, from the Airbus A330-200 aircraft would continue until July 10. (Al Jazeera News)
I think the meaning of ‘black box‘ is fairly clear here. It is the device that records all the information about a flight and all the communication between pilots and air traffic control.
The strange thing about this is that ‘black boxes’ are not black, they are usually bright orange!