Im with Dave Philips. I’ve always understood strobes should never be on during taxi due eyesight damage potential to other people on the ground (the strobes are 2000 candela on my current type) I’m not FAA experienced but agree and they cover it in this:
https://www.faa.gov/documentLibrary/media/Advisory_Circular/AC%20120-74B.pdf
And ICAO in their runway incursion manual
https://www.icao.int/safety/RunwaySafety/Documents%20and%20Toolkits/ICAO_manual_prev_RI.pdf
It all depends in the situation. On a big airport with lots of people running around on the apron, a big airliner will not switch on its strobes out of respect for the people working there. If you have a Cessna on a small grass strip without 100 ground crew you are probably fine to keep them on all the time.
Are you flying VFR in uncontrolled congested airspace or IFR in controlled and empty airspace? Bulbs or LEDs? It all makes a big difference. Use whatever you feel is logical.
Balliol wrote:
Im with Dave Philips. I’ve always understood strobes should never be on during taxi due eyesight damage potential to other people on the ground (the strobes are 2000 candela on my current type) I’m not FAA experienced but agree and they cover it in this:The FAA AC simply states that “Strobe lights should not be illuminated during taxi if they will adversely affect the vision of other pilots or ground personnel.” So it certainly doesn’t say that “strobes should never be on during taxi”. The question is: when can you expect strobes to adversely affect the vision?https://www.faa.gov/documentLibrary/media/Advisory_Circular/AC%20120-74B.pdf
Doesn’t say anything about when you shouldn’t use strobes. Only that you should when you’re on a runway or about to enter one.And ICAO in their runway incursion manual
https://www.icao.int/safety/RunwaySafety/Documents%20and%20Toolkits/ICAO_manual_prev_RI.pdf
Rwy20 wrote:
Landing light serves as a reminder for your clearance (also cleared to land – landing light goes ON).
Interesting. In recent years I’ve used the “landing light on when cleared to take-off” scheme. It seems to be adopted by many but not all CAT operators, and is both a reminder to me and a warning to others. I’d probably question a clearance to cross a runway in front of someone with landing lights on.
I’d considered using the same scheme for landing, but rejected the idea, on the basis that the landing light should probably be on earlier so the VCR can see me before clearing me to land.
Airliners have the following lights :
Nav – beacon (red) – Strobes (white) – taxi and landing (different angles or power), and some other non reluctant here (logo, wing, runway turnoff, etc;)
Every airliner left the nav lights on. So these lights are on whenever the aircraft is electrically powered, as a reminder of “something is happening here”.
Beacon is on before startup or moving aircraft, and off after shutdown.
Strobes is on before entering / crossing runway and off when clear of all runways. Strobes can be turned on in flight for safety purposes (light reflection in clouds)
Taxi is on for taxi, and off after gear retraction (this light is usually installed on the gear, so it will be OFF when gear is retracted, whatever the switch is telling)
Landing lights are ON before entering runway or after receiving takeoff clearance (depending on SOP’s*) and OFF after gear retraction or after 10.000k (*)
* : some airliners (airbus) have only retractable landing lights, some (737) have fixed and rectractable, some have only fixed.
Until recently, landing lights were switched ON when entering runway, and OFF above 10k feets. Reverse it for descent.
Some major operators started to use lights as a reminder as a clearance as been given.
Ryanair for example, turn the fixed landing lights ON when entering runway, but will leave the Rectractable Landing Lights OFF until takeoff clearance has been received.
On landing, they will turn Fixed lights below 10000, but retractable will come on after receiving Landing Clearance.
More recently again, those same operators, on the behalf of fuel saves, started to turn Retractable Landing lights off after takeoff, unless dicted otherwise for safety reasons. Easyjet is doing the same with the airbus, so they don’t have any Landing Light during climb below 10000 feets, as Airbus don’t have other landing lights.
Personally, on GA’s (the only aircraft I fly for real), I use the following switchology :
Classic landing lights will be ON before entering runway, OFF during after takeoff actions ; they will be ON again on approach, and OFF after vacating runway.
LED’s lights will be ON before entering runway, OFF on cruise, ON before descent, and OFF after vacating runway.
In any case, it’s ALL LIGHTS ON if flying near uncontrolled airfield, or if ATC report potential conflicting traffic.
Maoraigh wrote:
In bright day, I’ll see an aircraft before I see its strobes or beacon. Landing/taxi light I’ll spot much sooner.
In dim light, the strobes are eye-catching.
I agree.
Landing lights during the bright sky make the aircraft less visible, not more visible. In WWII, this was used as a stealth method, light up the entire airplane leading edge and it would make attack aircraft harder to see by submarines and the attack aircraft could get closer before being spotted.
I leave my landing and taxi lights on when flying at low level (both are LED ones) and the strobes are on all the time too when the engine is running. However this is for daytime which is the vast majority of my flying and IMHO there is little risk of “blinding” anyone in daylight. At night it is good form to not use strobes when off a runway.
We had some threads here on the flashing landing/taxi lamps which is one of the installation options on most of the LED products. It requires running a wire between the two wingtips to sync the lights. Some say flashing lights are illegal… but it sure as hell would make the plane a lot more visible.
NCYankee wrote:
Landing lights during the bright sky make the aircraft less visible, not more visible. In WWII, this was used as a stealth method, light up the entire airplane leading edge and it would make attack aircraft harder to see by submarines and the attack aircraft could get closer before being spotted.
I disagree. Your example is about an observer looking UP into the sky from the ground. That’s very, very different from looking DOWN against background clutter to spot an airplane. Seeing small airplanes against the background clutter of a big city (L.A. in my case) or patchwork fields is a challenge to say the least. Keeping the landing light on during the day definitely helps.
Peter wrote:
Some say flashing lights are illegal…
that should depend on the flashing.
If it is stroboscopic, maybe.
But if it is a wig wag, I would be surprised, as some manufacturers propose it from the factory (TBM’s got the option, and southwest airlines aircraft used (and maybe still use) this too).
I believe:
Flashing = anti collision light by definition (cs23 specifies all the frequency of flash etc)
Landing and taxi lamps are primarily there to illuminate the path ahead in poor vis / night so I would think an engineer couldn’t sign off such an installation / mod as it wouldn’t meet that requirement unless it was switchable between flashing and fully on/off
