page_title: Landing lights
section_title: Overview
hierarchical_section_title: Landing lights / Overview
caption_attribution_description: Mikoyan-Gurevitch MiG-29A Fulcrum (code 108) of the Polish Air Force arrives at the 2016 Royal International Air Tattoo, RAF Fairford, England. The portrait is named (on the other fin but invisible here) as 'kpt. pil. Ludwik Paszkiewicz 1907-1940'.
context_page_description: Landing lights are lights, mounted on aircraft, that illuminate the terrain and runway ahead during takeoff and landing.
context_section_description: Almost all modern aircraft are equipped with landing lights if approved for nighttime operations. Landing lights are usually of very high intensity, because of the considerable distance that may separate an aircraft from terrain or obstacles. The landing lights of large aircraft can easily be seen by other aircraft over 100 miles away.
  Key considerations of landing light design include intensity, reliability, weight, and power consumption. Ideal landing lights are extremely intense, require little electrical power, are lightweight, and have long and predictable service lives. Past and present technologies include ordinary incandescent lamps, halogen lamps, various forms of arc lamps and discharge lamps, and LED lamps.
  Landing lights are typically only useful as visibility aids to the pilots when the aircraft is very low and close to terrain, as during take-off and landing. Landing lights are usually extinguished in cruise flight, especially if atmospheric conditions are likely to make the lights reflect or glare back into the eyes of the pilots. However, the brightness of landing lights makes them useful for increasing the visibility of an aircraft to other pilots, and so pilots are often encouraged to keep their landing lights on while below certain altitudes or in crowded airspace. Some aircraft (especially business jets) have lights that— when not needed to directly illuminate the ground—can operate in a flashing mode to enhance visibility to other aircraft. One convention is for commercial aircraft to turn on their landing lights when changing flight levels. Landing lights are sometimes used in emergencies to communicate with ground personnel or other aircraft, especially if other means of communication are not available (radio failures and the like). Additionally, landing lights have at times been installed as a vehicle high beam in the hot rod scene, although this is not legal.
caption: Landing lights on a Mikoyan MiG-29
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