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The Guideline: emergency guidance lighting that won't fail

What Is the Guideline?

Regulations and Certification

Advantages of the Guideline

What Is the Guideline?

The Guideline is an emergency non-electrical floor path marking system for passenger aircraft.

It consists of a shock- and scratch-resistant plastic strip containing luminescent material that is installed on the cabin floor along the aisle, typically on both sides, thus showing the escape direction to the passengers in case of an emergency landing with smoke on board, especially when all cabin lights go off due to an electrical system failure.

The Guideline absorbs the ambient light in the aircraft cabin and then emits a soft, highly visible yellow-green guidance light. Since the working principle of the Guideline is based on luminescence, there is no electrical connection needed whatsoever. This gives the Guideline an extreme, practically 100% reliability when compared to the conventional electrical floor path marking system.

The Guideline needs just 30 min to be fully charged (with the cabin lighting set to full brightness), after which it emits sufficient light for the next 10 hours, with the complete discharge time amounting to about 72 hours.

As it is fixed by simple gluing to the cabin floor (after the carpet has been removed), the Guideline can be installed on any type of passenger aircraft. Please contact us and we will assist you in configuring the Guideline for your aircraft type.

If you are a Tu–154 operator, you are also welcome to contact the Vnukovo Aircraft Overhaul Plant (VARZ–400) in Moscow, Russia, which retrofits Tu–154 aircraft with the Guideline on a series basis. Or if you wish, you can install the Guideline at your own facilities.

Regulations and Certification

The Guideline is certified by the European Joint Aviation Authorities (JAA) to be in full compliance with the relevant airworthiness regulations, in particular with the FAR/JAR 25 paragraphs covering materials, emergency lighting, compartment interiors, fire protection, etc. According to the same regulations, the installation of an emergency floor path marking system on commercial aircraft is mandatory.

The materials of the Guideline emergency floor path marking system are non-toxic and non-radioactive.

Advantages of the Guideline

The Guideline is a completely new concept that revolutionizes the emergency floor path marking systems domain. Some of the major advantages of procuring the Guideline are:

• since the emergency floor path marking system is a Minimum Equipment List (MEL) item, failures of the conventional electrical system mean flight disruptions and high maintenance/repair costs. On the contrary, due to its non-electrical nature, the Guideline is practically failure-free;
• due to the large numbers of components involved, the reliability of conventional electrical systems is quite low, whereas the only component of the Guideline is the lighting strip itself;
• the Guideline is very easy and quick to install;
• the Guideline is virtually maintenance-free, since the only maintenance necessary consists of simple wiping during regular cabin floor cleaning;
• the Guideline is much cheaper than conventional electrical floor path marking systems.

To summarize, the Guideline saves not only a lot of trouble and maintenance manhours for an airline, but above all, a lot of money.