Happier landings at YLW
Improved runway approach lighting system to be installed
Pilots will be better guided to safe landings at Kelowna’s airport with an improved runway approach lighting system.
Fifty approach lights will provide much better illumination than the seven lights that now point toward the runway for planes landing from the south, YLW’s manager said Monday.
“What this is all about is safety,” Sam Samaddar said. “The approach lights that are there now could — on a night with particularly poor visibility — be mistaken by pilots as regular street lights.”
About 100 planes a day land and take-off at YLW, with a slight majority of inbound aircraft coming from the north. Approach lighting on the north side of the airport was upgraded several years ago.
The new approach lights will be installed on nine hectares of city-owned farmland immediately south of the airport.
YLW managers have requested a non-farm use permit from the Agricultural Land Commission.
The Central Okanagan Regional District’s board of directors were expected to endorse the non-farm use application at its regular Monday night meeting.
In its application for use of the farmland, the City of Kelowna says the airport currently has the same kind of approach lighting system that was in use at the Halifax airport when an Air Canada jet crashed short of the runway on March 29, 2015.
Two dozen people were injured in that incident.
The Transportation Safety Board, in its report on the crash, said that poor airport visibility in a snowstorm was a contributing factor. The Halifax airport has since switched over to the new kind of lighting system that’s proposed for YLW.
Along with the new approach lights, an expanded safety area at southern end of the runway will be installed to comply with expected changes in federal aviation regulations.
Installation of the new approach lights and construction of the safety area is expected to take place next summer.