Airport: The Requirements for Visual Aids

The Requirements for Visual Aids

Since the earliest days of flying, pilots have used ground references for navigation when approaching an airport, just as officers on ships at sea have used landmarks on shore when approaching a harbor. Pilots need visual aids in good weather as well as in bad weather and during the day as well as at night.

In the daytime there is adequate light from the sun, so artificial lighting is not usually required but it is necessary to have adequate contrast in the field of view and to have a suitable pattern of brightness so that the important features of the airport can be identified and oriented with respect to the position of the aircraft in space. These requirements are almost automatically met during the day when the weather is clear.

The runway for conventional aircraft always appears as a long narrow strip with straight sides and is free of obstacles. It can therefore be easily identified from a distance or by flying over the field. Therefore, the perspective view of the runway and other identifying reference landmarks are used by pilots as visual aids for orientation when they are approaching the airport to land. Experience has demonstrated that the horizon, the runway edges, the runway threshold, and the centerline of the runway are the most important elements for pilots to see.

In order to enhance the visual information during the day, the runway is painted with standard marking patterns. The key elements in these patterns are the threshold, the centerline, the edges, plus multiple parallel lines to increase the perspective and to define the plane of the surface.

During the day when visibility is poor and at night, the visual information is reduced by a significant amount over the clear weather daytime scene. It is therefore essential to provide visual aids which will be as meaningful to pilots as possible.