There are a few airline procedures that I’ve always wondered about.
If any of you are commercial pilots / cabin-crew, then these should be easy questions.
Why must window shades be open during take-off and landing? I’ve noticed this is the rule regardless of time-of-day.
Why must most cabin lights be switched off during take-off and landing? Passengers are told to use their personal reading lights if they want. This is also regardless of time-of-day.
These are the 2 mysterious procedures off the top of my head. Please post here if anyone else thinks of anything.
Now my guesses:
Reason for #1, in case of a disaster, open-shades let rescuers look into the cabin from outside.
Reason for #2, something to do with minimising electrical consumption? less draw on the generator leaves more for propulsion?
#1 is almost surely so that flight attendents can see if there is anything unusual on the runways. Flight attendents have a lot more essential-to-flying-the-plane duties than commonly believed. It’s very important for them to be as aware of their surroundings as possible during these critical times.
WAG on #1 The plane is most at risk to crash at take off and landing. Having the shades up allows light into the cabin allowing evacuation. Of course, that doesn’t explain why at night.
The lighting system uses very little power, so conservation seems off the mark. My thought was that a broken light could spark a fire in a crash. Cabins burn quickly, so if any ignition source can be eliminated why not?
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Why shades upon t/o & land? So you can see outside if we have to evacuate. Night or day, looking out the windows will help you and everybody else determine whether the fire’s mostly on th left, mostly on the right, ahead, behind or what. The better you can see the better you can decide what to do.
Why interior lights off? For better vision & visibility outside at night, again for evacuation. If the lights were bright and then go out during an accident, you’ll be blind in the dark for a few seconds until your eyes adapt. In a major screw-up those few seconds can mean the difference between a hundred people living or dying.
Why lights off in the daytime too? Easier to do the same thing all the time. If the rule only required the lights off after dark that’d be tough for the crews to interpret. When is dusk? How dark is dark enough?
It’s hard for the Feds to write a rule that’s practical in application, given their worldview that compliance must be absolutely 100% absolutely 100% of the time with zero room for judgment or gray areas ever.
So they simply mandate interior lights off for takeoff at all times of day. Easy for them, easy for us. Mystifying for you since yuu’re used to a much more common-sense shades-of-gray world.