Like a dash cam, they can save the footage only if there is a problem. Surely that would be much better than splicing together many third party camera recordings.
High quality cameras are actually really rare and expensive.
The NTSB (and many of their non-US counterparts) are incredibly adept at accident investigation using debris, black boxes and CVRs. Even in cases where the black boxes are damaged and video evidence is available, the video evidence is usually not so helpful as to be able to determine a root cause.
If you take into account that the cameras would be mostly useless in low-light or poor visibility conditions, and the costs associated with maintaining a nationwide network of high-res cameras that cover all runways at all major commercial airports (and ensures their lines of sight and operation through the never-ending renovations going on at these airports), I'm not sure that the benefits of having the cameras make sense.
An NFL game has a ton of cameras, a ton of camera operators, those fancy cameras on wire things, an onsite editing crew, and an audience.
To get good recordings, you'd need to invest a lot of time and money, and very few of the recordings would ever be watched. Doesn't seem worth the investment given third party recording seem to turn up quite often and video isn't terribly necessary for the investigation.
If Flock is going to retain footage indefinitely, why not the FAA/airport, to?
This is absolutely archaic thinking.
Reminds me of when I worked in data centers, pre-Snowden, and the official position on recording was how could we possible afford enough hard drives to store everything?!.
It doesn't seem to be such a terrible idea, though i do stand to be corrected.