The invention is of an aviation incident surveillance system which is to be carried on-board aircraft and stand ready at any time for deployment to visually record the final seconds of the downed aircraft. The system of the present invention centers on a rotocraft capsule which suspends itself approximately at an altitude at which the capsule is deployed from the distress aircraft while on-board video cameras and data recording systems record the environment surrounding the capsule which, of course, will include the aircraft from which the capsule was deployed. The capsule is provided with a self deploying, ballistic parachute system for gently landing the School upon expiration of the capsule's internal power sources for driving the rotocraft components.