Airbus A320WL flying at night with no lights
 

Wonder if someone can answer me a question. I wont mention the airline or destination in case I get someone into trouble. I'm very curious about what happened on a recent night flight we went on.

We flew on an Airbus A320WL.

During the climb I noticed the beacon and strobes were on, as soon as we reached cruise altitude these we're turned off until we started our descent.

I thought this was really unusual as every other flight I've taken these have always remained on throughout the flight. Is this now standard procedure for night flights?

All the best,

The beacon and strobes can be disorienting when flying in clouds, so the Captain will occasionally turn them off. It is not normal procedure for normal cruise.

Thanks Intruder, there wasn't a cloud in the sky so hence the reason I thought it being really odd. They we're off for around 3 hours.

The 'new' winglet design on the latest A320 series repositioned the strobe lights to the front of the winglet and they are now more visible from the cockpit and potentially more distracting.

It's always been in the rules to turn lights off if they are causing a distraction, so not common but not unheard of.

In my experience of operating the A320WL, with the retrofitted aircraft you get a distracting flashing from the strobes on the 'glareshield'. It seems to have been sorted once they started fitting WL on the production line.

I've never heard of anyone switching off the beacon for the same reason as they are on top and bottom of the fuselage?

Well usually you see the beacon flashing on the engine cowling and on the wing. It had nothing, in complete darkness.