I was reading in my local paper this morning about the airlines and high fuel prices and it started by talking on how U.S. Airways has stopped using glass on flights, Delta using lighter seats, and JetBlue only giving out 100 calorie snack packs for cross-country flights. The article was on how airlines are scouring there planes for ways to lighten loads to save fuel. And about middle of the first column quoted,
“There’s no room for even the smallest bits of dead weight, from redundant wing lights to extra wires in the walls”.
The first thing that springs to mind is nav lights. Many aircraft have two nav lights in each wing tip. If one burns out you may continue to operate with the remaining nav light. Placing two nav lights in the tip pretty much assured that you could dispatch the aircraft. Many newer aircraft have LED’s now and lots of older aircraft are being retrofitted. LED’s are smaller, use less power, weigh less and have a much longer service life that the incandescent lights they replace so the need for the second bulb is practically eliminated.
