The vest and the brightest
How does Pearson ensure pilots always know precisely where to land? There are almost 15,000 lights scattered across Toronto Pearson’s runways and taxiways, guiding the way to safety in constellations of white, red, green, yellow and blue. To maintain them all takes a team as nimble as a Formula 1 pit crew.
Whether pilots are touching down on one of the runways at Toronto Pearson, LAX, Hong Kong, Dubai, or any other airport anywhere in the world, they’ll see the exact same configuration (close to dependent on the type of weather that airport receives – I.E. Weather in Dubai is very different than weather at Toronto Pearson) of runway lights rolled out like a neon carpet. If it’s night, or there’s low visibility, pilots will first encounter a long strip of white lights. On Pearson’s Runway 06L, for example, that strip stretches for roughly 700 metres., About two-thirds of the way, there’s a wider white line, and beyond that, nine rows of red lights appear. These lights run on either side of the white centreline, guiding pilots toward the final row of lights as they make their approach—a single green band that extends across (and past) the 61-metre width of the runway. “These green lights denote the threshold of the runway,” explains Elise Fullerton, manager of Airside Electrical Maintenance at the GTAA. “They tell the pilot, land on this side of me, because this is the pavement.”
After that green threshold, a white centreline runs the full length of the runway (nearly 3 kilometres, in Runway 06L’s case), with extra white lights for the first 1,000 feet, forming what’s called the touchdown zone. Finally, a string of green inset lights lead the aircraft off the runway while blue lights indicate the taxiway edge as the aircraft’s turning off the runway. If pilots miss the turnoff, they’ll encounter another block of reds at the end of the runway. “Hopefully, you don’t go all the way down there,” Fullerton says, “but those reds tell you, ‘This is the end! Hit the brakes!’”
All those whites, reds, greens, and blues add up to a total of 14,906 lights, scattered across Pearson’s five runways and 30 taxiways. Some of those lights are inset, roughly the size of a frisbee; others are elevated, sitting on aluminum posts and marking a runway’s edge. All of them take a beating. Airplane wheels scratch the inset-light prisms and disrupt the photometrics. Water can get inside the fixtures and freeze, pushing out the bulbs. Snow plows knock around elevated lights like they’re bowling pins. “We go through them like crazy for a couple days after a snowstorm,” says Kevin Prentice, a veteran maintenance associate at the GTAA. His team has every available part and tool to refurbish broken lights—including a machine filled with crushed walnut shells that buff away rust till the fixtures gleam again—but first, someone needs to know there’s a problem.
That’s where the inspection team comes in. Each night, usually between 2 and 5 am, when the airport is quieter, they’re out in a pickup truck driving around—60 km/hr down the main runways, maybe 10 or 20 km/hr across the taxiways—looking for extinguished lights. It takes a week to cover the entire airfield for a maintenance check monitored on a tablet, but when they spot something on a “serviceability” check in need of replacing, the inspectors will flag it—runway inspectors call into Airport Operations for any correction that needs attention; taxiway inspectors make do with a paper map—and alert the electricians.
On a recent, sweltering July afternoon, 282 lights had been flagged for replacement, less than 2 percent of Pearson’s total. But not all broken lights are treated equally. Transport Canada mandates that in low visibility situations, when the runway visual range drops below 1200 feet, the field can’t have two consecutive lights out of operation. “So if we’re going into a low visibility event and someone sees two out— better call the electrician,” Fullerton says. And those electricians know to be quick.
The Manager Airside Ground Operations calls up Air Traffic Control and relays the need for repairs on a runway or taxiway. The tower then maneuvers flights around the electricians, who take off in a kitted-out vehicle, colloquially known as the Ice Cream Truck. The truck contains everything necessary to remove and replace the light fixtures, including a vacuum nozzle so there’s no debris left behind. It takes two electricians about 20 minutes to swap out each light—40 minutes later, they’re back in the truck and off the runway. “These guys are like a Formula 1 pit crew,” Fullerton says.
There’s more change on the horizon for the runway lights: Pearson is in the midst of moving from incandescent lights to LEDs, which should extend their lifetimes from 1,000 to 4,000 hours. Runway 06L has already made the switch, and over a month of very early mornings in June, electricians replaced all the lights on Runway 05-23 as well. LEDs are much brighter and crisper than incandescent bulbs, and some pilots aren’t entirely sold on them—as they approach one of the runways, they’ll ask Air Traffic Control to dim the lights. But Kevin Prentice is a total convert. “I love them,” he says. “You drive out at nighttime and it feels like you’re inside a Christmas tree.”
