A controller reported an aircraft that lined up for the wrong runway due to lighting of the runway. ...

Narrative:

Aircraft X was on a visual approach for [the center runway] at ZZZ. On short final the aircraft realized that he was lined up for the wrong runway and questioned it. I cleared him to land either [the left or center] because I had no traffic.after he landed I realized that the runway lights had been set only to level one and made the airport very difficult to see.the background on this is that a group of supervisors here decided that they were only going to use the presets for the lighting panel which set the lights for the bare minimum .65 light settings. They are doing this to hope to force a change by causing an incident. Unfortunately the level one setting makes the airport incredibly difficult to see due to the bright city and street lights all around the airport. I hadn't noticed that she had done this when I took the position or I would have set the lights to step 3 like most full performance levels (fpls) do for safety.aircraft X landed safely on the wrong runway without incident.reset our presets on the runway edge light via the lighting panel to reflect the reality of this particular airport environment. Level one is unusable. Level two is the bare minimum. Level three is the safest.we recently had an incident here at ZZZ where an aircraft ended up in a ditch due to poor lighting. You would think this would be a priority.

Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: A Controller reported an aircraft that lined up for the wrong runway due to lighting of the runway. The Controller reported the lights were on step one and he would have had them on step three and also stated the Front Line Managers (FLMs) are having issues with lighting at the airport.

Narrative: Aircraft X was on a visual approach for [the center runway] at ZZZ. On short final the aircraft realized that he was lined up for the wrong runway and questioned it. I cleared him to land either [the left or center] because I had no traffic.After he landed I realized that the runway lights had been set only to level one and made the airport very difficult to see.The background on this is that a group of supervisors here decided that they were only going to use the presets for the lighting panel which set the lights for the bare minimum .65 light settings. They are doing this to hope to force a change by causing an incident. Unfortunately the level one setting makes the airport incredibly difficult to see due to the bright city and street lights all around the airport. I hadn't noticed that she had done this when I took the position or I would have set the lights to step 3 like most Full Performance Levels (FPLs) do for safety.Aircraft X landed safely on the wrong runway without incident.Reset our presets on the runway edge light via the lighting panel to reflect the reality of this particular airport environment. Level one is unusable. Level two is the bare minimum. Level three is the safest.We recently had an incident here at ZZZ where an aircraft ended up in a ditch due to poor lighting. You would think this would be a priority.

Data retrieved from NASA's ASRS site and automatically converted to unabbreviated mixed upper/lowercase text. This report is for informational purposes with no guarantee of accuracy. See NASA's ASRS site for official report.

Attributes
ACN	1343345
Time
Date	201603
Local Time Of Day	0001-0600
Place
Locale Reference	ZZZ.Airport
State Reference	US
Aircraft 1
Make Model Name	Small Transport Low Wing 2 Recip Eng
Operating Under FAR Part	Part 91
Flight Phase	Final Approach
Route In Use	Visual Approach
Flight Plan	IFR
Person 1
Function	Local
Qualification	Air Traffic Control Fully Certified
Experience	Air Traffic Control Time Certified In Pos 1 (yrs) 15
Events
Anomaly	ATC Issue All Types Deviation - Procedural Clearance

A controller reported an aircraft that lined up for the wrong runway due to lighting of the runway. The controller reported the lights were on step one and he would have had them on step three and also stated the front line managers (flms) are having issues with lighting at the airport.