Review all information, especially after dark
Any night or low-light flight operation needs a healthy margin of error. Many pilots opt for higher cruise altitudes at night for the peace of mind that the added buffer provides. Fuel reserves go up at night, and the federal aviation regulations assign specific recency-of-experience requirements to night flight.
How does one set a safety margin for a particular night operation? Sometimes a number applies, such as the 50-percent increase in VFR fuel reserves—the increase from 30 minutes to 45 minutes that you must be able to fly after reaching your first point of intended landing. In other cases the safety margin is expressed as a specific procedure, such as the requirement to make your night landings “to a full stop”—an added level of detail that is also mandated for currency in taildraggers.
But you can’t legislate the margins for every contingency or every phase of flight. Hazards during flight at dusk or thereafter are elusive and can exact a heavy toll on the unwary, as two pilots discovered.
It was about dusk on June 11, 2011, when the pilot of a Mooney M20K began to taxi from transient parking toward the runway in Page, Arizona. He was “proceeding at a walking pace (two to three miles per hour) to the taxiway when he encountered a large ditch at the end of the tarmac,” said the National Transportation Safety Board’s online accident report. “The airplane rolled into the ditch, bending the propeller and the empennage.”
The pilot told investigators that “there were no signs, reflectors, warnings, or other indications that the ditch was there.”
But that assessment of the event didn’t pass muster in the view of the airport manager, said the NTSB. The airport official “reported that the taxi route from the transient area is clearly marked with in-ground reflectors, which lead to a lit taxiway and then to the runway. According to the manager, it appeared the pilot proceeded directly to the taxiway from the transient parking area where he was parked. He crossed a set of double solid lines that demarcate the taxiway edge, and continued into a helicopter operating/parking area. From there he crossed a marked service road, past a helicopter landing pad, and past a lit windsock before impacting the drainage ditch.”
The report included the airport manager’s further comment “that since the area is clearly marked and only intended for helicopter traffic, there is no extra signage warning of the ditch.”
Pilots seeking to avoid similar distress should review the Private Pilot Practical Test Standard elements requiring that aircraft be taxied “so as to avoid other aircraft and hazards,” and to observe “airport/taxiway markings, signals, ATC clearances, and instructions.”
On June 25, 2011, a pilot of a Piper PA-32-300 in Bridgeport, Connecticut, updated his lapsed night currency. The plan was to make three full-stop landings on a runway with a displaced threshold and a blast fence close to the beginning of the pavement.
In the NTSB report the pilot said that after takeoff he noticed “there was a slight haze in the vicinity of the airport. While turning to the base leg of the approach, the pilot trimmed the airplane for 90 mph and lowered the flaps to the ‘first notch.’ The pilot reported that he saw ‘two white lights’ on the vertical approach slope indicator, which indicated that he was above the glideslope, so he adjusted the trim to maintain 80 mph and lowered the flaps to the ‘third notch.’
“The airplane’s left wing impacted a 12-foot-tall blast fence, which was located 20 feet from the end of the runway, resulting in the separation of the left wing from the fuselage.” The report noted that the approach slope indicator for Runway 24 at Bridgeport’s Igor I. Sikorsky Memorial Airport “was set for a 3-degree glidepath and the threshold of the runway was displaced 319 feet.”
The NTSB report stated that “the blast fence was properly marked with red and white checker markings on the interior side and was not required to be lit by FAA facility requirements," and determined the probable cause to be “the pilot’s failure to maintain clearance from a blast fence on final approach to land.”
Reviewing all available information about a proposed flight is everybody’s business, day or night—even if you consider yourself familiar with the airport. For night flights in particular, give the Airport/Facilities Directory’s listing page extra scrutiny for information—or a refresher—on any vertical guidance equipment available, any runway limitations such as a displaced threshold, and the nature (and height, if published) of obstructions along the final approach course.
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