A closer look
The aviation industry really loves confusing naming conventions. The legendary 'black box'—the indestructible flight data recorder that holds the key to every airborne disaster—is practically never black. They are painted in high-visibility 'international orange' and plastered with reflective tape so that search crews can actually spot them among twisted wreckage or at the bottom of the ocean. Calling it a black box makes it sound delightfully mysterious, but in reality, it just looks like a heavily armored traffic cone.
