How Tolkein’s Hobbit Almost Caused Aviation Mayhem: A Cautionary Tale of Near Airfield Lighting

In the appendix “Fire and Water” of “The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies”, a short anecdote can be found describing how during night time shooting, the set received a visit from the police who asked the on-set lighting to be dimmed/turned off, as the nearby Wellington Airport had warned that the lighting posed a significant safety risk to their aviation operations. So how can some on-set lighting, albeit particularly bright lighting, pose a risk to aviation safeguarding?

Why Runway Lighting Matters

To answer this question, we need to know why lighting is so important to airports and pilots. All major airports in the world have runway lighting. This lighting will highlight important factors about the runway a pilot is about to land on, such as the runway edges, the runway beginning and end and the runway centreline. Most major airports will also have lighting to indicate if a pilot’s approach is to shallow or too steep to work in conjunction with on-board Instrument Landing Systems (ILS) or as a failsafe in case of equipment failure. An example of runway lighting can be seen in Figure 1 below.

Figure 1:  Runway Approach Lighting.

The Risk of Lighting Confusion Near Runways

Any bright lights in the vicinity of the runway can pose a safety risk as the pilot’s eyes adjust to the bright light in the dark of night, causing the runway lighting to appear dimmer, or, the lighting may eclipse the runway lighting altogether. It is also important that any lighting around the runway is designed such that it cannot be mistaken for runway lighting.

The solution is for developments (or streetlights) surrounding the aerodrome to have dimmer, downward facing lighting, perhaps with a specific colour that does not match runway lighting. In the case of “The Hobbit” set, they had very bright lighting pointing directly skyward at spaced out, translucent sheeting, essentially creating a bright beacon only a few hundred meters from Wellington Airport’s only runway.

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References

Figure 1: Runway Approach Lighting, unsplash.com, 1 April 2019. (Online) Available: https://unsplash.com/photos/assorted-color-lights-JuexHZXVsZI [Accessed 14 May 2025]https://www.pagerpower.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/runway-lighting-thumbnail.jpeg