Which airports have lights at night?

Is there any way that I can find information concerning if an airport has lights on the runway? I am doing a world tour with an Xcub and sometimes I really like to fly at night. However, since I don’t know if an airport is active at night, I change the time settings from night to day. It’s easy to understand that very small airports are not active at night and central airports are. However, there are many airports that I don’t know in advance if they have lights or not. Is there any way to have that knowledge prior to the flight?

When I fly to another airport and I want to know what’ll happen if I arrive too late (for me dark=too late unless there’s lights…) then I go to that airport first, set night time on the runway, and see what happens. Take out the drone 200 Ft and you’ll see everything.

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for sure private strips will be almost certain to have little or no lighting. stick to icao “four-letter” airports, though the smaller ones may have no tower… also, you can cheat in a sim, and go to the airports you don’t know ahead, change to night and get a preview.

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Are you telling me I am cheating ?? :scream_cat: :smile_cat:

btw @OptimalSam you can also google airports before you fly there… try lights [ICAO] or night picture [ICAO], chance is you get a picture, or detailed information… that’s no cheat, Dan… or is it… :cat:

There are many options to see which airports have lights. One is to use https://skyvector.com/ enter the airport identifier in the upper left and click GO. You can click on the little “i” that comes up

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which will give you all of the information about the airport, including if it has lights.

Another option is to use one of the free companion apps, such as Little Nav Map or one of the similar ones out there. These applications give all sorts of information about the airports, including lighting. LNM reads the data directly from the sim, so if it is wrong in the sim, LNM will reflect that so it may be a bit more accurate than websites such as skyvector, but websites may be a bit easier.

There are many other websites and applications that have this information, although some will only be for particular parts of the world.

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@ArcanePython931 I guess I’ll take the 2nd choice (google ICAO lights). It’s more realistic. It’s a good idea, it feels more real than using the… cheating drone! Thank you!

Real life option to check might not be good for all airports.

For exemple, cyqb ingame only have few exterior lights, when irl you have running rabits + whole center light up

Wish they would have done a more thorough job on airports lights

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@KenZ8143 thank you for your answer. However, in skyvector (that I frequently use) I don’t recall finding any information concerning airports lights. Is it somewhere there and I haven’t noticed? Or is it written in a coded way that I don’t understand? Thank you in any case.

I just landed a 172 at Nuremberg airport EDDN in pitch dark, having actually travelled to and from there at night on several occasions I know for a fact it is fully lit IRL.

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Notice the L, it means it has lights…

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No lights because of the lack on an L…

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@KenZ8143 @Maki152 very nice info ! gonna try it out :+1:

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@Maki152 that was very useful!

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This is another good resource.

https://msfs.breincorporation.com/

Once you know the ICAO (in this case KLLR) you can click on the Airports symbol in SkyVector. It will give you detailed information about the airport as shown below. As @genbrien mentioned, what the real life data tells you and what the simulator has may be two different things. But, it seems a pretty good place to start and has been useful for flight planning.

Hm a better question would be: Which airports don´t have any lights at night? :wink:
I have never seen a dark airport (except some tiny grass-trips or bushflight locations.)

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I second Little Nav Map. Extremely handy companion.

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I know Pyongyang International Airport doesn’t have lights… for obvious reasons. well they have taxiway lights… but not runway lights.

Little Navmap is incredible in too many ways to mention… an amazing collection of code written by a very talented and responsive developer. If you hover over the airport you want to land at it will give you lots of information, including preferred runways. Super great to know!

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I use Neofly to plan my flights on my world tour. It also provides information like airport lighting. In fact I think you can select an option so it only chooses airports that do have lights :slightly_smiling_face: