They call it a ‘night qualification’ in JAR-speak nowadays. Practically what this means is that once you’ve got it, it doesn’t need to be renewed. To carry passengers at night you have to have done one take-off and landing at night in the last 90 days (they can count towards the 3 required anyway for passenger carrying).
I did mine for a couple of reasons. One was for the fun of it and for the views on a clear night — wonderful. It got me started on instrument flying. It’s vaguely useful if you’re planning to get a licence in a country where night training is part of the standard licence.
Practical use? It’s more useful somewhere like the USA where most airfields have pilot-controlled lighting and don’t mind you dropping in late. Over here so many airfields that do have lighting and you have a chance of getting into (so not Stansted!) close ridiculously early. And unless I had rally car lights on the plane I wouldn’t fancy a landing into an unlit field.
The engine failure procedure in a single at night was described to me thus: Turn on all the lights you have. If you don’t like what you see, turn them off again. Though there have been successful outcomes — that safety award earlier in the year is testament to that.
The one thing that would make me use mine more is if there were more airfields that we could actually use at night. 6pm closing times are a bit silly really, which was why I finished mine off at Biggin.
M
Sign In
