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The Role Of Runway End Identifier Lights (REILS) In Airport Safety

12 月 8, 2025

Runway end identifier lights (REILS) serve a single purpose in your airport’s runway lighting infrastructure: to help ensure that pilots can instantly and accurately locate the runway threshold during approach.

Their ability to provide intense, high-contrast visual cues with synchronized high-intensity flashing lights supports every airport’s mission to prevent misidentification, runway excursions, and unstable approaches, especially during challenging visibility conditions and varying approach angles.

This month’s blog discusses the various types and benefits that REILs offer to airport operators seeking to optimize operational safety.

What Are The Different Configurations Of Runway End Identifier Lights?

REILs share a common purpose in enhancing runway approach safety. However, there are different configurations of REILs with significant variances in their beam direction, lamps, electrical configuration, and physical mounting.

Beam Direction

REILS typically fall into two different categories when it comes to beam direction.

Unidirectional units focus their output directly toward approaching aircraft, delivering the concentrated flashing threshold cue pilots expect on final approach. This is the most widely used system and is suited to nearly every runway application.

Although less common on airport runways, omnidirectional REILs provide illumination patterns visible from multiple angles. They’re typically used for runways supporting circular approaches or operations where supplemental angular visibility is beneficial.

Types Of Lamps Used

Traditionally, airports have deployed xenon-based REILs, which provide a powerful beam for pilot guidance. However, they also carry certain limitations, such as excessive heat generation, short lamp life, and reduced reliability under harsh environmental conditions. These disadvantages not only have the potential to compromise safety, but can also increase power and maintenance costs.

Most modern airports have switched to LED lamps to support their runway lighting infrastructure, including their REIL systems. LEDs provide tens of thousands of hours of stable photometric performance, which significantly lowers electrical consumption, and improves resilience against moisture, de-icing chemicals, and extreme temperature swings.

Reduced energy consumption by LEDs also decreases the regulator and cabling loads and helps optimize power costs. They also require less frequent maintenance than other lamp types, and their sealed optical assemblies prevent premature failures caused by water intrusion or chemical exposure.

Electrical Configuration

How REILS connect to your runway lighting system can also differ. For example, standalone REIL units operate on dedicated circuits, making them ideal for airfields with older infrastructure or a limited need to integrate with the broader runway lighting system.

However, most modern airports are switching to integrated REIL systems that seamlessly connect to advanced runway lighting control technologies, such as 机场照明控制和监测系统 (ALCMS), Airport Surface Detection Equipment (ASDE), and Advanced Surface Movement Guidance and Control Systems (A-SMGCS), allowing REILs to help support the network’s remote monitoring, fault reporting, and synchronized intensity control capabilities.

Physical Mounting

Physical mounting also plays a role in your REIL system. Most airports use elevated REILs because they provide consistent light output, easy maintenance access, and long service life. These lights are installed on low, fragile posts that will allow the light to break away safely on impact.

If you’re not sure which REIL system would work best for your airport, get in touch with a reliable airport runway lighting supplier for customized recommendations.

How REILs Work With An ALCMS

Advanced technology, such as ALCMS, has enabled airport runways to be safer than ever before. Integrating REILs, along with other lighting systems, with an ALCMS gives airport operators access to numerous automation strategies that improve efficiency and situational awareness.

For example, ALCMS offers remote light fixture monitoring, fault notification and automated controls that adjust beam and intensity based on current visibility. REILs connect to the ALCMS through communication protocols such as Modbus or powerline carrier technology, which can often eliminate the need for dedicated control cabling.

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The Benefits Of Installing REILs At Your Airport

REILs deliver a long list of benefits to airport operators, including:

Adds enhanced visibility during approach to airports with short, displaced, or partially obscured thresholds, intersecting runways, or tight runway-to-taxiway configurations
Improves pilot situational awareness when descending through darkness, haze, fog, precipitation, or glare
Allows pilots to differentiate runway lights with synchronized flashes designed to stand apart from competing light sources
Acts as a recognizable signal for pilots approaching runways in dense urban areas, industrial corridors, or mixed terrain where ambient lighting competes for visual attention
Supports advanced approach lighting technology with an added margin of safety during the transition from instrument references to visual cues.

When you’re ready to explore how REILs can optimize your airport operation, call the runway lighting experts at Airport Lighting Company for reliable, customized recommendations that focus on what’s important to the success of your operation.