Flying at night is one of the more enjoyable experiences a pilot can have. There tend to be less aircraft flying, controllers tend to be more relaxed, and once the sun goes down the weather tends to calm down. Nighttime is a great time to learn or practice simulated instrument flying because a view-limiting device is more effective in the dark and it's easier for your instructor or safety pilot to see other traffic. Unlike most ICAO countries, US regulations generally permit private pilots and above to fly at night without the need of a special rating, but the regulations on logging night flight and maintaining night recency of experience are a bit complicated. So break out your flashlight and take a somewhat circuitous journey through night flight regulations. Along the way, I'll point out some different resources pilots can use to determine when, depending on the situation, nighttime begins and ends.
Definitions of Night
Title 14 of the Code of Federal Regulations (aka 14 CFR) contains several definitions of, and references to, night and nighttime. It would be nice if all these definitions were found all in one place, but they aren't. So start at the beginning, 14 CFR part 1, where many (but not all) definitions used in title 14 are found.
14 CFR - 1: Night means the time between the end of evening civil twilight and the beginning of morning civil twilight, as published in the American Air Almanac, converted to local time.
Any flight time between the beginning and end of civil twilight can be logged as night time, but not so for night landings and takeoffs (more on that later). Finding out when civil twilight begins and ends is a bit more involved. If you know when sunset has occurred or if you can see the sunset while on the ground, you can approximate the beginning of civil twilight as being about 30 minutes after sunset. I say approximate because there are locations where, depending on the time of year, the sun just barely sets and this rule of thumb won't work.
Anytime sunset is imminent or has occurred, remember that 14 CFR 91.209 requires you to turn on your aircraft's position lights (sometimes called "nav lights"). When it comes to anti-collision light, the pilot-in-command may elect to turn them off if it's in the interest of safety. So don't taxi around other pilots on the ramp with your strobes needlessly blazing. For aircraft operating in Alaska, the rules are different because ... well ... Alaska is different.
Most of us don't have internet access while in flight, but IFR-certified and handheld GPS receivers can tell you the time of sunset and sunrise for your current location. Finding that information isn't always easy, but it's there.
A free iPad/iPhone app, Skyclock Lite, lets you easily determine sunset, sunrise, and the beginning and end of civil twilight based on your location. The nice thing about Skyclock Lite is that you can configure it to show sunset and the various types of twilight (civil, nautical, and astronomical) on an analog clock face or as a block of text. And did I mention it was free?
Night Landing Currency
Another important night regulation has to do with recency of experience for pilots who want to carry passengers, found in 14 CFR 61.57 (b) (emphasis added).
... no person may act as pilot in command of an aircraft carrying passengers during the period beginning 1 hour after sunset and ending 1 hour before sunrise, unless within the preceding 90 days that person has made at least three takeoffs and three landings to a full stop during the period beginning 1 hour after sunset and ending 1 hour before sunrise ..."So if you haven't done at least three night takeoffs and three night landings to a full stop in an aircraft of the same category and class, you can only carry passengers up to 1 hour after sunset. It's hard to imagine a scenario where you'd not be current for night landings, have passengers on board, and need to land 1 hour before sunrise. I guess you could have departed the previous day around sunset and flown all night ...
When it comes logging flight time and tracking night takeoffs and landings, an app like LogTen Pro makes it easy. Once you've entered your departure and destination, you need only note your out/in times and LogTen Pro will figure out how much of the flight occurred at night and whether your landings and takeoffs count toward your day or night currency. For PC users out there, I suspect that Logbook Pro has a similar capability. Otherwise, you'll need to track these times manually.
More Fine Print
Also found in 14 CFR 61 is a night flying restriction on commercial pilots who don't hold an instrument rating. These guys and gals must make up a very small minority of the commercial pilot population in the US, but they may not carry passengers for hire at night.
Other pilots restricted from flying at night include sport pilots, recreational pilots, and student pilots (unless they have a separate night flying endorsement from their instructor). Alaskan pilots who earned their private pilot certificate during the summer may not have been able to experience nighttime conditions and can be issued a certificate with a night flying restriction, but that restriction has to be removed within 12 calendar months.
The FAA recently published a letter of interpretation that states an instructor who is not current for night landings may be provide instruction to a pilot who is also not current for night landings. The reasoning is that for the purposes of night recency of experience only, the instructor is not considered to be a passenger. Maybe it's just me, but this seems like some convoluted logic.
Pilots who fail the color vision portion of their medical examination will normally be issued a medical certificates that states that they are prohibited from flying at night. Depending on the severity of their impairment, a color blind pilot may be able to obtain a letter of authorization (referred to as a Statement of Demonstrated Ability or SODA) by passing an examination with an FAA inspector. The pilot must demonstrate they can correctly identify light gun signals from a control tower as well as other types of runway and obstruction lights. The details on this process can be found in the FAA's FSIMS, Volume 5, Chapter 8.
NTSB, SODA, and Nighttime
One night accident involving a pilot with color blindness occurred in 2002 when a Federal Express 727-232 descended prematurely into trees on final approach to runway 9. The first officer was the pilot flying and had a first class medical and was issued a SODA for color blindness based on his military service record. A video recreation of the accident can be found here.
In the November 2003 letter, the Chief of the USAFSAM Aerospace Ophthalmology Branch stated that the first officer's color vision discrimination was impaired to an extent that would ìlimit him to very nearly a gray-blue-yellow world, we believe that he would definitely have had problems discriminating the PAPIs as they were designed because the red lights would not appear to be red at all, but some other wavelength that would make them more indistinguishable from white. The letter also stated that it might be possible for someone with this type of [color vision] deficiency to use brightness differences between the white and red PAPI lights to help differentiate between them.
The entire report is available here and NTSB's probable cause included this statement (emphasis added).
Contributing to the accident was a combination of the captain's and first officer's fatigue, the captainís and first officer's failure to adhere to company flight procedures, the captainís and flight engineers failure to monitor the approach, and the first officer's color vision deficiency.The NTSB has also taken issue with the FAA's definition of night in mountainous areas. In 2001 a Gulfstream III on an instrument approach into Aspen-Pitkin County Airport descended into terrain just 2400 feet shy of the runway threshold. A contributing factor was that the instrument approach being used was not authorized at night, nighttime had not technically arrived. The NTSB recommended that the FAA review the definition of nighttime in mountainous areas because in this case, the sun had disappeared behind the mountains a full 25 minutes before official sunset. In this situation, nighttime-like conditions, low visibility, unlighted terrain and a flight crew intent on landing proved to be a deadly combination.
Regs, Theory, and Practice
There's a lot more that goes into safe and successful night flying, including physiology, equipment, planning, and risk assessment, but that's the skinny on FAA night regs and civil twilight. And while the regulations surrounding night flight may be convoluted, actually flying at night can be enjoyable, contemplative, even peaceful. So as a tower controller who worked the night shift in Las Vegas used to say when handing an aircraft off to the departure controller, "Good Flight and Good Night."
