Why do aircraft have landing lights?

Why is it, that when I shout "AAAAAAARGH!" in a Library, everyone tells me to shut up, yet when I do the same in an aircraft, everyone joins in?

Must be the landing lights!

Sorta OT - but, since georgeob1 is in the neighborhood, and brought up flair, I thought he might be interested in this ... this puppy flairs with real flair :wink:

Oh - and it has landing lights - real bright ones


Thanks to ImageShack for Free Image Hosting

(Sorry 'bout the image quality; these were scanned from film camera snapshots - all I had handy at the moment)

Nice. Very nice, but I don't recognize it.

Thanks. It's unsurprising you didn't recognize it; there aren't a lot of 'em around. Its an '01 Maule Orion (but not quite as nice as the one in that article ). It is a great plane - pretty much the winged equivalent of a Jeep. STOL, it can land or take off in a couple hundred yards. A lot of 'em are configured as float planes or ski planes, they're real popular with bush pilots, and they're great crop dusters, too - stall speed is 40 mph, rate-of-climb is 1500 fpm, and they're stable as a table.