In your May 22 Question of the Day, you indicated that when the Hard Rock “Guitar Tower” is completed, it will shine some type of bright light into the sky. I could be wrong about this, but I thought that in the 1990s, Luxor did something similar and the FAA objected to it, because it could have caused a problem for pilots. Would there be a similar issue for the Hard Rock?
It may be too soon to say. In any event, neither Hard Rock’s PR firm nor the Federal Aviation Administration deigned to respond to our query.
Fortunately, the media team at Harry Reid International Airport was only too happy to cooperate. They e-mailed us as follows: “Our team has been in coordination with the FAA and the Hard Rock Hotel construction team throughout the project. Once the lighting infrastructure is installed, there will testing conducted to ensure it remains within FAA-approved levels and doesn't pose a hazard to pilots.”
In other words, nobody’s going to find out until the mega-light is switched on.
That said, we can certainly use the 450-foot Guitar Hotel at the Seminole Hard Rock in Hollywood, Florida, as a precursor in terms of this question. That tower features a nightly music-and-light show, from which six high-powered beams project upwards of 20,000 feet into the night sky, mimicking the strings on an imaginary guitar neck.
These beams don't pose a threat to airline pilots, which we know from the light show being fully reviewed and approved by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). The hotel is located under heavily regulated flight paths near Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport; thus, the Seminole Hard Rock had to secure explicit federal clearance before operating the display.
The FAA evaluates all high-power outdoor light and laser installations to ensure they don't interfere with cockpit visibility, flight paths, or air traffic control towers. And unlike handheld lasers that track moving aircraft and create dangerous glare or flash blindness, the hotel tower's six beams project straight up into space in a fixed predictable position. So rather than a hazard, the beams serve as a highly visible static landmark. Commercial pilots flying into South Florida frequently spot the illuminated guitar strings from the air without any disruption to their navigation.
Finally, the beams aren't left on all night. They only activate for brief designated windows during the show.
We can only assume that the Las Vegas light show will be similar in power, duration, and the FAA's green light, so to speak, when the Hard Rock opens on the Strip late next year, a debut we're greatly looking forward to, we might add.
