On weekend mornings, the outdoor patio of the Spitfire Grill at California's Santa Monica Airport hosts a congregation of local pilots who gather to wait for the morning stratus to dissipate or to engage in lively conversation about topics aeronautical.
One Saturday last month, the hot topic involved the pros and cons of VFR operations at night. There was, of course, the ageless and tiresome discussion about the relative safety of night flying in single-engine airplanes. Suffice it to say that some pilots are comfortable with it, and some are not. Most, however, take the middle road and are selective about the conditions during which they are willing to venture skyward after sunset. (The same could and should be said about daylight flights.)
While enduring the fads, fallacies, and myths assaulting my sensibilities, an interesting thought began to form. It struck me that pilots are challenged to demonstrate their proficiency during flight tests and flight reviews that are conducted almost exclusively during daylight hours. How well, I wondered, would we perform the same maneuvers at night? I do not recall ever having practiced or demonstrated stalls, steep turns, turns about a point, and other private pilot maneuvers in darkness.
I was so intrigued by this concept that I eventually asked three acquaintances to participate in an experiment. These pilots, two men and a woman, were people to whom I had administered flight reviews during the past year (during daylight hours), so I was aware of their abilities. Considering their experience, I deemed their skill levels to be better than average. (They had total flight times of 183, 400, and 2,800 hours respectively.) They had no idea what I had in mind or what these flights would entail.
"Trust me," I said. "It'll be fun and possibly enlightening."
In a sense, I didn't know what to expect either, but I suspected that the results would be interesting one way or another. Armed with a copy of the FAA's Private Pilot Practical Test Standards, I asked each pilot (on three different evenings) to head for an area northwest of our home airport. It would not have served the purpose to have them perform maneuvers over the Los Angeles Basin. This carpet of lights is so extensive and brilliant that the horizon is usually well defined (even without a moon). It would not have been much different than a daylight flight. Nor did I want to bias the results of this experiment by flying over the desert where lights are few and far between. I instead asked them to head toward Camarillo, California, where there is a fair amount of ground lighting, yet the horizon is not easily perceived in all directions.
I asked each pilot to demonstrate maneuvers listed in the PTS and was somewhat surprised at the results. Not one performed within allowable tolerances (plus or minus 100 feet for steep turns, and so forth). The problem, I discovered, was that each pilot had some difficulty alternating reference between the outside world and their instruments. This was especially true during stall recovery. None of the pilots referred to their attitude indicators when the stall broke and the nose dropped. They instead attempted to recover visually. Night maneuvers, we concluded, re-quire an artful combination of visual and instrument flying. The mix depends on the extent to which the horizon can be perceived.
The last maneuver that I requested caught each pilot off guard. If a simulated engine failure is kosher during a daytime flight, I reasoned, it should be just as valid an exercise at night.
In the first case, the pilot believed that it was best to glide toward a dark area instead of an illuminated one that assured a threatening assortment of man-made obstacles. After all, he reasoned, the best emergency landing sites are wide open fields that are not illuminated. I wasn't thrilled with that decision. My preference would have been to head for an area where something could be seen rather than trying to find a soft spot in the black abyss. But that was his decision, and I bit my lip in silence as the altimeter unwound.
As we neared the ground, the landing lights began to take effect, and we could see that we were headed toward an industrial complex under construction. It was unlikely that we could have survived a forced landing there. This reminded me of the adage, "If you don't like what you see with the landing lights on, turn them off."
In the second case, the pilot opted for a freeway with light traffic (an anomaly in Southern California). This choice most likely would have resulted in a successful arrival. In the third case, the pilot selected a long, wide, well-illuminated street in a residential neighborhood. It would have been imprudent to descend low enough to speculate about the outcome.
We were grateful that the power failures had been simulated. The outcome of such an emergency is much less predictable at night than during the day.
I am not certain what these experiments proved other than to raise an awareness that we are not as proficient at night maneuvers as we might like to believe.
My suggestion is that pilots consider taking their next flight review at night or arranging for some night instruction, so that maneuvers normally performed only during the day can be practiced in darkness. The experience might prove illuminating.
For more information on night flying, see " In-Flight Emergencies: Night Forced Landings" — Ed.
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