It is required that all aircraft are equipped with wing tip position lights.  The left wing tip requires a red light and the right wing tip requires a green light.  These lights show that aircraft’s relative position from your vantage point

        
                                                                                            

The FAA airmen written exam asks this practical application question:

“While flying at night, a pilot sees aircraft lights out his windshield at the eleven o’clock position.  A green light is on the left side and a red light is on the right side.  Your magnetic heading is 010 degrees.  Is the aircraft in the windshield going away from you or coming toward you?”

In this case, the pilot must know that the aircraft is coming toward him.  (The magnetic heading is extraneous information.)  “Red right” means conflicting traffic.

The closure rate of two jet aircraft flying toward each other can easily approach ten miles a minute.  The pilot knows he may not even see the traffic until the last ten seconds.  Flying at the right assigned altitude is imperative.

Changing altitudes can appear innocuous.  Pilots must be aware of conflicting traffic when transitioning altitudes.  Even if he is right, he can be dead wrong.

Sometimes I hear people say it is difficult to know right from wrong.  Many people even deny there is a right way or a wrong way, good or evil.  Sometimes we try to be cozy with both.

U.S. Senator Chuck Shumer openly denies that traditional values have or ever had any real meaning in society.  He says traditional values are passé.  But his statement goes against logic.   Senator Shumer is cruising at the wrong altitude.

Green still means go and red still means stop.  But we can’t even get cozy even with that.

“There is a way that seems right to a man, but therein are the ways of death.” Proverbs 14:12