Landing lights

[Number Cruncher]

After doing a drop off to Gatwick on Saturday night, i decided to watch a few approaches into 26L. It was interesting to note that i could always spot a certain 'No Frills' carrier 733 from distance because it was the brightest thing in the sky, however, on the opposite scale, a certain charter A320 didn't even switch any approach/landing lights (nose wheel only) on until about 0.5 DME! I couldn't spot the thing and i'm sure controllers in the tower couldn't either! My question is, are there no standard requirements or guidelines on the level of lighting required?

:confused:

[Hand Solo]

Landing lights on the A320 extend from beneath the wing into the airflow, causing a distinctive rumbling noise which has been known to worry passengers. As such some operators delay extending the landing lights until later stages of the flight, often when the landing gear is extended, though presumably you can extend them at any time should you feel the need to. There are no official regulations that I know of which state that landing lights need to be on by a certain stage, or even that they are required. Alternatively, they may have just forgotten to turn them on, it happens.

[Capt. Crosswind]

The convention of using landing lights, day & night , to mark your position, seemed to come into general use about the time of the Vietnam War . The first time I encountered this procedure was on ops into/out of Tan Son Niut (Saigon).
Military acft had used this procedure for some time prior to this I believe & it was so effective I continued the method in all terminal areas from then on, as did many other pilots. It seemed to spread around Asia in a very short time. I never recall any notam or directive to use this procedure - it just happened by common consent.
It did take some years to become established in Australia I understand,due to bureaucratic inertia being opposed to the practice. Eventually commonsense prevailed.
It is very effective in daylight haze conditions in my experience. On a circling approach in a dust storm at Dubai one afternoon the very switched on Tower Controller gave me some good back up on final by confirming when I was lined up okay.
He could see my landing lights - I could hardly make out the coast line.
I've no doubt the practice has prevented a few mid air collisions particularly in the Saigon area ,back then.
It would be interesting to hear from any Pruner who feels he has been saved from an incident or midair because of this practice.

[HEATHROW DIRECTOR]

As an experienced tower controller I can assure you that we don't simply rely on landing lights to determine where a/c are!

[Denti]

Yep, but what are you using if you don't have radar? There are a lot of towers without radar-equipment/displays around.