Jurassic Jet said:We leave our lights on climbing thru 10K and then back on again descending thru 10K. Of course, the majority of time our 9's are flying is nightime. I just don't think the fuel savings would be significant. Descending out of 10 you are usually at flight idle anyways (well, we are).
I really don't think the vibration is that bad from the lights. Of course I've never had a box come up and tap me on the shoulder and complain.
Trust me, if it saved fuel or money, we would be doing it. That's how copper wire was invented. Two of our managers fighting over a penny.:laugh:
BTW, I don't think the fuel savings on the olives were significant enough for him, so I think he eliminated all of them and saved $40,000 per year. I just finished that book not long ago.
I think it's a great idea and procedure - unfortunately, our management is more concerned about burning out bulbs, along with the (ridiculously) low extra fuel consumption.
This is the reason you will see, a lot of times, some of our MD80s taking off from DFW or ORD with just the Nose lights on bright, and then when the gear retracts, badabing! we have a stealth jet.
(Occasionally we'll have some takeoffs where the F/Os even forget to turn on the ground floods and wing/nacelle lights, so now they are TOTALLY dark except for strobes and beacons.) This is because the use of those lights is at pilots discretion, they are not mandatory.