Lights and Other Bright Ideas

Av101 is here with illuminating answers to more questions that you may not have thought to ask.

Aircraft lighting has been through a silent revolution (because light is meant to be seen and not heard).?

Exterior lights on airplanes used to be incandescent bulbs, which were heavy and burned out too often. Nowadays those lights have been upgraded to light-emitting diodes (LED), which last longer and weigh half as much. They cost more to buy and less to maintain. Simply put, they are brilliant.

The taxi light does not sit on the roof and say “on duty” while the plane is flying. That’s on taxis themselves. On aircraft, the taxi light is on the nose landing gear. It is used by pilots to see the runway. It has a narrow angle of illumination and points straight forward.

While the taxi light is used to see, the Landing and takeoff lights are also there to be seen. Some such lights are located on the NLG (Airbus), or under the wings near the fuselage (Boeing).

The Boeing landing lights have electric motors to move them into place before landing. These lights are also used upon takeoff and stay lit until hitting 10,000 feet. Then they shut off and retract until they’re again flush with the wing. If wings had armpits, that’s about where those landing lights would be located.

Pilot school teaches pilots to turn on the landing lights to see the airfield. But if they don’t like what they see, they can turn them off and plow into whatever’s cluttering up the runway. So, yeah, keeping the lights on is a good idea, knowwhatimean?

Because the wing-mounted landing lights have electric motors in them, these complex lights have extra opportunities to fail and need replacement and repair. In the aviation aftermarket that’s known as a good part to have on the shelf.

Two runway turnoff lights can be found on the NLG or on the root of each wing. They are fixed to point slightly left and right. They help the pilots at night as they motor onto or off the runway. Getting stuck in the mud at night is bad form; runway architects design the runways with grass hazards because they’re sadists.

Of all the exterior lighting, the runway turnoff lights matter the least to us in the aviation aftermarket. They don’t get a lot of use and they don’t operate under especially high voltage. In short, there’s little reason for them to short-circuit. When they don’t break often, they don’t need frequent repair or replacement. Don’t go out of your way to buy them as part of a package because they won’t move very fast.

Wing & engine inspection lights are on the side of the plane and are pointed at the front of the wings and engines. They allow the pilots can see if there is ice building up on the wings’ leading edges during flight. They also help the pilots play the game “What type of bird did we just suck into the engine?”

Well, not the pilots, but the flight attendants. Because planes lack review mirrors, the flight attendants are tasked to lean over and look through the passenger windows to observe the wings and engines. And I always thought they were just being friendly.

On the top - and also underneath - the fuselage are the beacons, which are flashing red strobe lights. The beacons are turned on before the jet engines are started and they warn the ground crew to GTFO of the way or risk being turned into a Jackson Pollak painting.

Anti-collision lights get a good bit of environmental exposure and more lightning hits than the other lights.

The lights on the wingtips are called wingtip lights, of course. No, not really. They are the navigation lights. They do not flash. The right-hand light has a green lens cover, and the left-hand light is red. They are complemented by a white light on the rear of the plane. This parallels nautical lighting. In the event of a water landing, however, airplane lights tend to go out entirely.

Also on the wingtip are high-intensity white strobe lights called anti-collision lights, and they flash constantly during flight. These are the brightest lights on the plane. They’re helpful to ensure that the planes don’t bump into each other up there. Contrary to the prevailing opinion, flying in a poorly maintained airplane is not dangerous. Crashing, on the other hand - that’ll ruin your whole day.

The various wingtip lights need service comparatively often. They powered with high voltage, some of them constantly blink on and off, and they’re right in the airstream, bouncing around on the end of flexible wings. So they are vulnerable to airstrikes, water intrusion (with accompanying corrosion) and FOD. They are familiar friends to the aviation aftermarket.

FACTOID: There is a pattern to the flashing of the anti-collision lights that distinguishes Boeing from Airbus. On Boeing airplanes, the lights flash once, and on Airbus they flash twice in succession. On Embraer planes they flash to the rhythm of “The Girl from Ipanema”. On the AARP corporate plane they blink on one side only, continuously signaling a left turn. Thank you very much; I’ll be here all week!

Although it’s a cool idea, Logo lights do not cast images of the Nike swoosh. Located on each side of the horizontal stabilizer, they illuminate the airline’s logo on the tail fin. This is more than just advertising – there’s also a safety feature. The theory is that if you can see a big, well-lit tail, there’s probably an airplane attached to it, so you’d better watch out.

Some planes have lights in the wheel wells. These lights help the ground crew perform pre-flight inspections at night. They also assist stowaways who want to hide in the wheel wells and personally experience the high altitude oxygen deprivation and subzero temperatures that are inherent in the “super economy” ticketless flight.

If the exterior lights should fail, the plane is not necessarily grounded, so don’t believe every supposedly frantic “AOG” RFQ that you get. But the plane is restricted to daylight-only operation until the problem is fixed.

A proposed solution is that chosen passengers be equipped with those powerful little giveaway flashlights that you can get at any MRO. In the event of an emergency, the appointed passengers can shine them out the windows. To be honest, that’s my own idea, and I don’t know why nobody takes me seriously. Likewise, I’ve failed to get any traction on my idea to outfit birds with navigation lights.

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