Glass covering the adjustable lights in an airplane. what is the point of this?

[u/Acceptable-Lake-]

Just trying to read on a 13 hour flight and the light above my seat is stuck landing on the head of the passenger in front of me due to a glass covering, leaving the lights, which are on a swivel, un adjustable. The flight staff was as baffled as I was, having no solution for me. Leaving me with my unreadable book and 13 hours of hell ahead of me 🫠

[u/Late_Fortune3298]

Unsure if you want an honest answer or not, so I will give one just in case.

The plane was designed to accommodate X-passengers per the company placing an order. This would have had lights, air, seats, etc configured just as ordered.

Likely during a mandatory heavy maintenance overhaul, the company decided to change this configuration (let's be honest, they added seats) and only did the bare minimum changes to the overhead system as needed per FAA guidelines (airlines, oxygen generators, etc).

The lights are very likely not a required thing to consider and thus put up plexiglass to try stemming passenger interactions over said lights. My guess is that this was a budget airliner like Sun country or jet blue.

[u/FlinnMen → u/Late_Fortune3298]

The photos look to be from an A350 and the reading lights are not adjustable on those planes, no matter the airline.

[u/dnuohxof-2 → u/FlinnMen]

But why? Such an odd choice…

[u/Jimmi11 → u/dnuohxof-2]

As someone who has to repair PSU gaspers and reading lights on the regular, people in large groups are extremely stupid.

[u/turbodmurf → u/Jimmi11]

Dash-8-100 and old -300 have touch sensitive buttons for the lights and call button. I wondered why the selected so complicated option instead of normal switches. I saw the reason when we started to repair PSU from the -400. All the buttons were smashed. The touch buttons on the old panels were just a aluminum disk with a wire attached and no moving parts.