Switch position (Up or down?)

[RedTailSwinger]

I am working on a project regarding switch positions on different aircraft. It would help me out if anyone could let me know the airplane they fly and if your aircraft requires up or down for the ON position.

I have noticed there doesn't appear to be any standardization in switch positions. On some airplanes down equals ON and on other aircraft it equeals OFF. Some manufactures even produce different switch positions (up vs. down) for different airlines. For example, a Northwest Airlines' A320 landing light switch is opposite of most other airlines (down equals ON).

 

[Princedietrich]

From what I remember in the 727, any switches that were mounted on a vertical panel like the instrument panel or the FE panel were configured for up to be ON and down to be OFF. For the switches mounted on the overhead panel, they were configured so that forward (being moved towards the nose) was ON and aft (being moved towards the tail) was OFF. In the LR-35, all of the switches were configured to be up for ON and down for OFF unless they were 3 position switches in which case all bets are off (but the middle position was usually OFF).

This may be true only for the 727 and the LR-35, these are the only large aircraft I am familiar with.

 

[twinbeech]

CRJ/Challenger Forward for flight. (overhead panel)

 

[fastback]

Switch position

Oh, it's about airplanes. Nevermind...

 

[Cardinal]

Beech 1900
Emb-120
A320 (As France intended, not UA, NW)

All are Up=On

 

[DC8 Flyer]

I've noticed a lot of switches are "towards the windscreen" is on/norm and away is off/manual.

FWIW

 

[better up here]

CJC saab switches - MEL'd

 

[Oakum_Boy]

forward=on, up=on.

 

[Spooky 2]

From what I remember in the 727, any switches that were mounted on a vertical panel like the instrument panel or the FE panel were configured for up to be ON and down to be OFF. For the switches mounted on the overhead panel, they were configured so that forward (being moved towards the nose) was ON and aft (being moved towards the tail) was OFF. In the LR-35, all of the switches were configured to be up for ON and down for OFF unless they were 3 position switches in which case all bets are off (but the middle position was usually OFF).

This may be true only for the 727 and the LR-35, these are the only large aircraft I am familiar with.

Ah yes...there is more to this than meets the eye. Off hand, the only two airlines that I can recall having the overhead panel treated as a vertical panel, were TWA and Luftansa and there was even a reason behind that combo. It was TWA's position that Up, or in the case of the overhead, Back, was the proper way to turn a switch on. When the Chief FE was aked about this once he said, "do you ever go in a room and push the light switch down to turn it on?" End of argument. So happens that after WWll, TWA did a lot of technical assistance for Luftansa, thus they had the same switch arrangement in their aircraft as well.

Maybe someonce can chime in here from DAL that just bought the used TWA/AA B757's. I wonder if they are this way, or maybe AA or DAL had them turned around.

 

[Borat Sagdiyev]

Forward-on versus sweep-on

The ATR family uses the sweep-on switch philosophy. This means up is on. That being said, the ATR has relatively few switches compared to similar aircraft. I believe MOST Airbuses also share this philosophy, but I am no expert on those airplanes.

Have you ever had a chance to look at the book "Human Factors in Flight" by Frank Hawkins? He was KLM's human factors guru for a time. There is a short blurb on switches in there. I will give you the gist of what he writes in his book. The forward-on concept created ambiguity on vertical or near-vertical panels. Also, this made it very hard to move panels and preserve switching logic as new equipment was installed and moved around on different aircraft panels; after enough rearrangement, switches located near each other would have completely different logic. There were a few visible incidents and accidents involving crews operating interchange aircraft that had different switch logic.

I hope this helps.