"Maintenance is usually done under contract, so cherry pickers and such will not cause extra cost."
[To Boofhead] Unfortunately, there are certain things under many aviation maintenance contracts which don't incur extra costs and there are certain things which do. Our airline charges customers extra for things like cherrypickers. An engineer with a screwdriver comes a lot cheaper than an engineer with a cherrypicker :-) And on the subject of contracts.... A daredevil handyman with a stepladder would obviously be cheaper to contract than an engineer with a cherrypicker... but, thankfully, there are laws in many countries to prevent this.
"If the bulb is out the MEL can be used to get to Base where the lights can be fixed by your own blokes who are paid whether they are fixing the airplane or not."
But what happens when an MEL specifies that an item be fixed/fitted before the aircraft departs to a country? I must admit, I hadn't read our Logo Light MEL for a while and had forgotten the details (so I re-read them):
It specifies that if the lamps are inoperative, the aircraft can depart provided TCAS is OK. However, when going to the USA, operations are restricted to one night arrival and one night departure only. Sounds OK, too, but on some days our aircraft have to make three stops in the USA before they return home.
"The landing lights on ground power are not really relevant, are they?"
Previously, I was simply commenting on what someone (else) perceived as a "feature" (rather than a design bug). You _seemed_ to suggest that I didn't know what I was talking about simply because you had never come across this anomaly before (in your many years of experience)(???). I apologise if this was not the case.
Rgds.
Q.