Lights on airliners

Upvote:10

Any aircraft must have these lighting systems:

  • Navigation lights: red on the left wing tip and green on the right wing tip. Other aircraft or ATCs can determine the direction by looking at those.
  • Strobe lights: a strong flashing light to help aircraft avoid collisions in low visibility conditions.
  • Landing lights: if the aircraft is certified for night landings it must have landing lights which are strong lights at the forward usually to help pilots see terrain and runways.
  • Logo lights: usually at the tail to show the airlines logo at night, sometimes at the belly of the aircraft (as in A380).
  • Wing lights: to help pilots do their ground checks and to increase visibility in general.
  • Rotating beacons: usually used on ground to let ground personnel know that engines are running.

Now what you saw must be a combination of all of the above. Some aircraft look like a moving party at night, I remember the MD90s for example having a funny lights system if all lights are on.

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