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I n order to safely conduct nal ap- proach, landing, taxiing and take- o operations around the clock at Belgrade Nikola Tesla Airport, it is essential that pilots have the best possi- ble visual contact with the airport run- way in order to carry out all ground and air operations. For most of us, looking out the win- dow of a plane at the variety of white, red, green, yellow, blue lights, yellow and white lines on the runway is a sign that we are just about to land and that after landing we can turn our mobile phones back on. To pilots, the lights and markings on the runway are more like a secret language - a language vital to safety when the plane is still in the air and af- ter it lands. That’s because these visual aids must be clear to pilots from all over the world, standardising their position and light characteristics is very impor- tant. All parts of the maneouvering sur- faces - taxiways or aprons - have their alphanumeric features, which are con- tained in the airport maps and whose illuminated markings are placed at pre- scribed locations. The letters and num- bers marked with taxiways, aprons or positions are pronounced in an iden- tical manner according to the “Radi- otelephony Spelling Alphabet” table, knowledge of which is obligatory for all active participants in air tra c (pilots, air tra c control, airport services etc.). Modern lighting systems such as those at Belgrade Nikola Tesla Airport are very complex in their design and signi cantly increase the safety of air tra c, especially in conditions of re- duced visibility. After leaving the park- ing position, the rst challenge for the pilot is to bring the plane to the run- way. Whether day or night, the variety of di erent light signals make it easy to maneouver through the maze of tax- iways. The lights on the edges of tax- iways to the runway are always blue. The blue lights are easy to spot when you look at the runway from the airport building, but often these are the rst lights at the airport that passengers see on landing. The blue lights on the taxi-
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