Only one bloody headlight!!

Danbo!

Nope, not in the wrong forum!

I live in south west Dublin, and generally have steady stream of commercial traffic overhead. Not 100% what the altitude is for landing lights on, but on a good few occasions when aircraft are overhead I see the landing lights come on, and the odd time seen them being turned off when they're departing to the south. (I thought it was below 10,000ft=lights on, but this seems high considering distance to airport)

Anyway, tonight I saw a plane on approach, once directly overhead both landing lights come on for a few seconds, then one turned off/failed. Question is, are they notified in the cockpit of this or do ATC tell them when they're approaching and is it an issue that gets immediate attention?

View Profile

Main landing lights are turned on/off below FL100. Some aircraft with retractable landing lights will turn them on once cleared to land, or just after takeoff.

Airlines can differ on this procedure however.

Grease Monkey

All the aircraft lights(landing,taxi,strobe,nav,beacon) are checked once a day during the engineers daily check,most times the pilots themselves will notice a landing light gone and write it up and report it to the engineers,so it wont usually go a day without being changed,hope this helps

EchoIndia

Some aircraft (usually executive jets) have pulsing landing lights which flash alternately for enhanced visibility and apparently for better deterrence of birds:

http://preciseflight.com/products/pulselite/commercial