Glare and Airliners
 

Ok, here's an observation I have made.
When you see older aircraft or pictures of them, you see the portion of the nose in front of the cockpit windows painted matt black, evidently to prevent glare. Even darker coloured aircraft, such as olive drab Daks, had this feature.

Here is an example:
File:C-74 long beach.jpg - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Now I get to the point:
Modern airliners are overwhelmingly white and usually fairly shiny, why do they not have such anti-glare markings? I've never noticed if they have matt, non reflective areas in front of the cockpit. Or is it that the nose drops away so steeply gare isn't a problem?

Just about all aircraft have a "Glareshield" sole purpose to prevent glare from the instruments. This does not allways help at all attitudes and directions in relation to the sun but does a pretty good job. Other aids such as sun screens on side windows help where the glare shield can not. Instrument lighting also helps and is sometimes automated.

G'day Tombo,

It's never been a problem in any of the airliners that I've flown. In my present one, B767, you can't actually see any of the nose of the aircraft from inside the cockpit so you wouldn't get any glare reflected inside.

Regards,
BH.

Exactly. On ATR, narrowbody Airbuses and DHC-8 one can't see anything of the nose when properly seated.

seeing through of my serengeti doesn't see any glare :8

On the Fokker 50 you can't see the nose either, only a little strip bordering the windshield where the windshield wiper is attached.

Hello Tombo:

I think there are two reasons why a matt black paint finish is no longer commonly found directly ahead of the windshields of contemporary aircraft:

1) Contemporary Part 25 (transport) aircraft are required to have an eye height reference device or other means of allowing the crew to ensure that their seat is adjusted such that they are looking out the windshield from exactly the design eye reference point. The design eye reference point is usually such that the crew don't actually view the fuselage surface ahead of the windshield.

2) The shape of the nose of contemporary aircraft is substantially different from that of older aircraft, and reflected light no longer presents the problem it did on the older designs.