Originally Posted by
msjh
I'm interested in aviation but only a (lapsed) microlight pilot. So a simple question: why is it not mandatory for lit runways to have a pattern of lights that spells out the runway name that can be seen by landing aircraft? e.g. "28R"
You don't always get to see the runway until a few seconds to touchdown. We are doing about 65 to 75 metres per second, and operating in visibilities down to 200m visibility. Not a lot of time to see the runway and confirm everything is where is should be. A picture is worth a thousand words:
Most approaches aren't in conditions like this. However, we have something far better than some new runway identifier, the ILS beam with ident specific to the runway that is good for at least 25nm. In this incident, Airbus doesn't display the ILS for some types of approach by default, extra steps need to be taken, and they weren't. Not mandatory to have it displayed for the approach they were flying, but it would have given additional cues earlier that there was a problem.