The chief reason runways aren’t illuminated using elevated lights is that it creates a collision hazard. What I mean is, while FOD is a major concern, flooding the runway in light at night won't give the pilots eagle eyes. If they spot such things at slow speed, they should report it to be removed. The pilots are not expected to spot rocks and small broken pieces of pavement 2 km down the runway before starting the takeoff roll, day or night, for example. It's the airport's job to make sure the runways are clear of FOD. How can the pilots spot any physical obstacles on the runway?.And with the cockpit lighting brought down for night operations, the pilots' eyes adapt and see much more than a GoPro. The bottom-right image above shows how strong the taxi (not even landing) lights are for example. To complement answer with regard to wings and poles and outlines, much like how many highways rely on cat's eyes and the vehicles' own headlights, so do the runways in a sense. So I cherry-picked the above photographs. I am not a videography expert, but I highly doubt the output of a GoPro at night is representative of the human eye. By closing or covering one eye whenĮxposed to light, some night vision acuity is retained in the closed Such as search lights and landing lights, remember that each eyeĪdapts to the dark independently. After the eyes are adapted to the darkness, avoidĮxposing them for more than one second to any bright white light as First, adapt to the low level of light and then As per the FAA's suggestion:īefore and during night flight, the adaptation process of the eyes Entering a very bright runway environment all of a sudden would be strenuous on your eyes, in the event of a go around you would then have night vision issues due to the exposure in the brightly lit runway environment. This can cause your pupils to constrict making it harder to see in a dark environment. Generally when flying at night its advised to not expose your eyes to any bright lights prior to flying and to ensure that no flash lights or other bright lights go off in the cockpit while flying. In turn they would need to be quite bright due to the distance.Īnother key reason and perhaps more important is to preserve the pilots "night vision". This means you would need to put any high mast lights far enough away to allow aircraft clearance. Generally speaking there is nothing saying that a planes wingspan needs to be narrower than the runway and at some smaller airports the wings may very well be wider than the runway. Proper runway lighting very clearly outlines a runway at night ![]() Runway edge lights are not intended to illuminate the runway they are intended to outline it. Because the planes might hit them and it's not great for your vision at night.
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