Simulator Comparison of Netherlands Landing Zone Lighting Patterns

As a part of an exchange of equipment and services in airport lighting research programs, the Systems Research and Development Service, of the Federal Aviation Agency, has conducted a comparison of touchdown zone lighting configurations of interest to the Netherlands Government. The experiment was conducted in a flight simulator with a visual landing attachment. Systems compared differed primarily in the use of aiming point identifiers and longitudinal vs. lateral arrays in the landing zone. The results confirm the role of the aiming point identifier in controlling precision of longitudinal positioning at touchdown, but warn against possible ambiguity of information if sufficiently distinctive pattern characteristics are not used to distinguish between successive elements of the approach and landing zone systems. Other findings of interest are reviewed in the report.