Currently on a night flight where the FAs announced prior to departure that the cabin lights were inoperable in that they are stuck in the full on position with no ability to turn them off or dim them. Problem cannot be fixed until arrival in ATL (where my flight is headed). Not complaining, just an odd issue and one I’ve never encountered in all my flights. Not irritating to me as I travel with my own eye mask and can fall asleep standing up, but I was thinking this would be pretty bad on a long-haul overnight flight for most passengers.
Anybody else ever had this or a really random issue like this that I have to imagine is pretty rare?
On a related note, while the chance has to be infinitesimally small and I personally am not genuinely worried about it on this specific flight, this situation led me to wonder what would happen if an electrical short in the wiring for the lights were to start an onboard fire and nobody could kill the lights? This thought occurred to me from when I’ve watched documentaries about planes that have turned off their transponders in flight, such as the mystery around MH 370. When pilots have been interviewed about why a plane even has the ability to disable the transponder, the answer has always been “pilots want to be able to turn absolutely anything off that runs on electrical power in the event of an onboard fire, including the transponder switch.” So what about these lights? Happy New Year!
