Ground school lesson
Runway markings, signs and lights
An airport speaks in paint and light. Learn its vocabulary and you will never be the aircraft sitting somewhere it should not be.
What you will be able to do
- Read the hold-short marking from both sides and honour it.
- Decode the sign colours: red, black on yellow, yellow on black.
- Recognise the lights: beacon, runway edges, and the approach slope.
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Step 1 of 3
The hold-short line, the one that matters most
Where a taxiway meets a runway: four yellow lines across the pavement, two solid, two dashed. The rule is one sentence: solid lines on your side, hold; dashed on your side, you are on the runway side, cross and clear without stopping.
Solid pair toward the taxiway, dashed pair toward the runway. Hold on the solid side until cleared or until the pattern is clear at a non-towered field. Crossing that line when you should not is a runway incursion, one of the FAA's named special-emphasis items on every checkride. At a towered field you cross only with explicit clearance; non-towered, only after looking both ways down final yourself.
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Step 2 of 3
Signs, by colour
Sign Colour Means Mandatory White on red Runway holding positions and no-entry: the signs you never pass without authority. Location Yellow on black Where you are: the taxiway or runway you are on. “Black square, you're there.” Direction / destination Black on yellow Where things are: arrows to taxiways and runways. Runway distance remaining White on black Thousands of feet of runway left. Other paint worth knowing: a displaced threshold (arrows leading to a heavy bar) may be taxied and departed from but not landed short of, and yellow chevrons mark pavement unusable for anything.
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Step 3 of 3
The lights
After sunset or in murk
- Airport beacon: alternating white and green marks a lighted civil land airport.
- Runway edge lights are white; taxiway edges are blue. The runway ends at red; its threshold shows green from the approach side.
- A visual approach slope indicator (VASI or PAPI) shows red and white lights: on the correct glidepath you see the published combination; the memory aid “red over white, you're all right; red over red, you're dead” has outlived generations for a reason.
- Night flying itself needs the MOSAIC-era endorsement and medical from the privileges lesson, but you will taxi past these lights at dusk long before then.
Check yourself
3 questions. Pick an answer to see whether it is right and why.
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Approaching the runway, the hold-short marking shows two solid lines on your side. What do you do?
Solid side means hold. You cross with tower clearance, or at a non-towered field only after checking final approach yourself, and then clear the marking completely.
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A sign with white characters on a red background is what kind?
Red means mandatory: runway holding positions and no-entry points. Yellow-on-black tells you where you are; black-on-yellow points where things are.
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An alternating white and green beacon at night marks what?
White and green is the civil land airport beacon. Military fields flash two whites with the green; heliports differ again.
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FAA Aeronautical Information Manual chapter 2, airport markings, signs and lighting (public domain).