The difficulty in locating crash sites has prompted international efforts for alternatives to quickly recover flight data. This document describes the technical requirements and architectural options for the Timely Recovery of Flight Data (TRFD) in commercial aircraft. ICAO and individual Civil Aviation Authorities (CAAs) levy these requirements. The ICAO Standards and Recommended Practices (SARPs) and CAA regulations cover both aircraft-level and on-ground systems. This report also documents additional system-level requirements derived from the evaluation of ICAO, CAA, and relevant industry documents and potential TRFD system architectures. It describes two TRFD architectures in the context of a common architectural framework and identifies requirements. This report also discusses implementation recommendations from an airplane-level perspective.