F900 safety mod question
 

Forgive the 'spotterish' question, but I thought this would be the best place to ask. I saw a Falcon 900 in 2002/3 with a pulsating light located at the wing root. Whilst it was taxiing and on the runway, the strip light, perhaps 0.5m long was pulsating and gave excellent visibility to the aircraft from quite a distance. I assumed that this modification was in response to the tragic incident at Milan in 2001 in foggy conditions Linate Airport disaster - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

It seemed like a clever idea at the time, yet I have never seen this on any other bizjet since that time. What ever happened to the concept ?

Pulse light it is called, standard on the Falcon family for some time. Use depends on SOPs.
Some aftermarket suppliers for other type includes random pattern lighting (pulse) in order to make the aircraft more visible ( not a steady light).

If one, as usual, ask pilots about it, you will have 11 opinions out of 10 people.
Mine, is "USE IT ALL THE TIME BELOW 10K ft" and anytime you need to be identified at night (KANO VOR springs to mind)

IIRC the pulsating lights were available before that tragedy. And most likely it would not have prevented it.

We have bought it as an option in our Cessna - it works automatically when a TCAS RA is generated and naturally manually (we use it below FL100)

Thanks for the replies chaps, it would seem that I've always been in the wrong place at the wrong time to not have seen the pulse light on jets various over the years. To my mind it was a clever solution to a lack of visibility in certain conditions.

Seems like an unnecessary distraction :eek:

Comes from the Gulfstream factory with it. Not sure it helps at all, since we all have TCAS, but I use it below 18.

FR