End of night VFR coming?

Minority opinion, but I think FAA are doing the right thing here. It should be a separate add-on endorsement or rating like in Europe. Night flying without visual references is IFR. Not saying you need to be IFR, but you need to have had enough training to be able to fly entirely on instruments alone - and recover from an upset. Nowhere near enough training of that is done today in the PPL. Not even close. It's a joke.
 
Grum.Man said:
And there are circumstances that flying in clouds can be done safely too. Like high ceilings, no cumulous activty. So you made a risk analysis for flying into mountainous terrain assuming you can follow a road and that the night will remain clear, what if that changes?
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I wouldn't plan a flight in a canyon that was too narrow to turn around in.

Risk is not an either/or situation; it comes in degrees. We obviously assess the relative risk levels of the two situations differently. I don't think that's going to change.
 
mulligan said:
Not jumping on the pile here but I can guarantee that there is in fact a huge difference being under the hood and being in a cloud. Under the hood you can absolutely see out and grab references for a brief second that reset the brain. In a total cloud immersion, there is no reference for the brain and will get you eventually as to where a hood will likely never get you.
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Man yall are like the kings of finding the one loophole in every scenario... Ok, let me re-word... let's assume you were doing what you were supposed to and not peeking... That is exactly what flying through your run of the mill everyday cloud is like. You aren't mysteriously thrust into some other realm of possibilities which is why it's called "simulated".
 
Palmpilot said:
I wouldn't plan a flight in a canyon that was too narrow to turn around in.

Risk is not an either/or situation; it comes in degrees. We obviously assess the relative risk levels of the two situations differently. I don't think that's going to change.
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EXACTLY! Just like I wouldn't fly into a cloud I couldn't safely get out of (assuming it became legal to do so).
 
Being in a cloud means you can't just remove the hood and immediately be in good VFR. That is a BIG deal when something goes wrong.

Being in a cloud means you are actually dealing with (usually) real bad weather.

IMC flight isn't just about not being able to see. It is about dealing with all that bad weather. (wind, hail, rain, snow, low ceilings, no outs, ice, broken instruments etc). And dealing with the decision making that goes along with those (like no we can't go).

Most IMC weather, you are in the clouds for only part of the trip. Usually you climb above them and can get out of them. Not always.
 
If navy pilots, flying off carriers have trouble with night flight vertigo causing some to be sent back for further instrument training, then why wouldn't a recent ppl have trouble with much less training and probably instruments that are not as good? I would think an ifr rating would be a good thing. I rarely flew at night and never did again after the mooney ran rough at night in central penna. never flew again at night single engine.
 
coloradobluesky said:
Being in a cloud means you can't just remove the hood and immediately be in good VFR. That is a BIG deal when something goes wrong.

Being in a cloud means you are actually dealing with (usually) real bad weather.

IMC flight isn't just about not being able to see. It is about dealing with all that bad weather. (wind, hail, rain, snow, low ceilings, no outs, ice, broken instruments etc). And dealing with the decision making that goes along with those (like no we can't go).

Most IMC weather, you are in the clouds for only part of the trip. Usually you climb above them and can get out of them. Not always.
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Take the bad weather out of the scenario and what do you have? 95% of my VFR flights are in good weather with ceilings of 3500 to 4500 agl in the summer time due to scattered clouds that could not be penetrated maintaining VFR separations. The ride is bumpy and hot where as getting above them would be cooler, smoother, and more efficient. I'm just saying there is a very large middle ground that could use another category...
 
stratobee said:
Minority opinion, but I think FAA are doing the right thing here. It should be a separate add-on endorsement or rating like in Europe. Night flying without visual references is IFR. Not saying you need to be IFR, but you need to have had enough training to be able to fly entirely on instruments alone - and recover from an upset. Nowhere near enough training of that is done today in the PPL. Not even close. It's a joke.
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You are right, the FAA is doing the right thing which is they are not doing this.
 
Grum.Man said:
EXACTLY! Just like I wouldn't fly into a cloud I couldn't safely get out of (assuming it became legal to do so).
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I don't think the fact that we see the risks differently tells us much about whether the FAA would go for your proposal.

I think I may have heard that there is some sort of "IFR-light" option in Europe. If so, it would be interesting to know how it works out in practice.

Looks like Google has some information about it:

https://www.google.com/search?q=imc+rating&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8

Also:

https://www.google.com/search?q=ifr+in+europe&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8
 
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Grum.Man said:
Yet the FAR allow a pilot that is VFR only to fly in VMC conditions at night. I'm only pointing out that the skills required are the same for both and the risk involved is equal.
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You do realize there is more to IFR flying than just aircraft control.

What if what you say is true, you can legal fly over the ocean, desert, no horizon reference at all at night only looking at instruments as long as your talking with ATC. What if during that time your radios fail? Do you have provision in place to handle that? Your traffic avoidance is now gone and ATC has no idea what your intentions are. IFRules is a different beast altogether. As far as VFR night is concerned anyway its legal and you were trained during PPL. Just stay proficient and do what you need to do for a safe outcome but don't get complacent, that's when people die. I don't see that privilege getting taken away or modified.

I also disagree with allowing a VFR pilot to punch through a cloud deck to get on top. Again what if your in the clouds and you lose radios? Now you have also compromised the safety of any IFR traffic on a flight plan in the area. On a scattered day, weave through on up no big deal its scattered clouds after all.
 
I found the night training for my PPL to be very effective. It was sufficient to fly my Mooney from furthest WV down to KFAY south of Raleigh with sunset about halfway along, four days after I finished my insurance dual. I bought the plane five weeks after my PPL checkride.

Navigating at night isn't that hard. The nice yellow splotches on the sectional match up pretty well with the lights on the ground, even if the exit ramps on the interstate are the only lights around. It also got me back from the beach to WV two months after that, 3-1/2 hour flight leaving the grass strip right at dusk. If only the runway lights at the airport all lit up . . . It was not uncommon for 1/3-1/2 of them to be burned out.

Just be careful with the weather, clouds are more difficult to see.
 
Hank S said:
Just be careful with the weather, clouds are more difficult to see.
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One insidious night flying menace that is not talked about much is the sudden fog on short final. This is where you fly a normal VFR pattern in apparently excellent VMC and everything looks fine down below, yet you find yourself in pea soup (radiation fog?) just before you start the flare. It's happened to me a few times, and fortunately being IFR rated and current I managed to keep my wits, maintain my attitude, and land normally (albeit with a higher pulse rate). But I can imagine a VFR-only pilot encountering the same situation who might get spooked and not fare as well. Perhaps one more reason all those other countries require the special night rating (which I don't support, but understand).
 
Grum.Man said:
I guess my thought process is this...

It's legal to log Instrument flying without an IFR certificate. To do that you are flying by only reference to your instruments. This usually happens at night over water or secluded spaces on a moonless or overcast night. My only point is that, the act of doing so is no different than being in the middle of a cloud. The one exception is that yes... if you look up from your instruments you will see another aircraft or lighted object to avoid at night versus in the clouds you cannot. The simple solution is to allow a VFR rated pilot to be in the clouds as long as they are in communication with ATC AND they are providing separation services.

Now I know this will never happen but it's logical and would make summer flying much more bearable. Not to mention this conversation is helping to raise my post count ;-P
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Wait... I can log instrument time without being IR and without having a safety pilot on board? That doesn't pass the smell test.
 
ircphoenix said:
Wait... I can log instrument time without being IR and without having a safety pilot on board? That doesn't pass the smell test.
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Smell test or no, it's true. More importantly, you can fly in actual instrument conditions, legally, without an instrument rating, as long as you can maintain both the minimum altitudes for your location and VFR minimums (visibility, distance from clouds). Others have described the conditions where that happens elsewhere in this thread: typically over open water in summer haze, or moonless dark night over a remote area with no lights below. In some parts of the country, the latter condition is very common at night.

The legal need for IFR is about visibility and cloud clearance minimums, in order to require ATC (or the big sky theory, in remote areas with Class G to 14,500) to maintain separation from other aircraft. It is much less about the need to keep pilots from losing control in conditions where visual references are not available.
 
In my former life I have a lot (1k+) night VFR. Never once had an incident.
That being said, I think everyone, even if they never take the IFR exams or plan to intentionally fly in IMC, should do extensive IFR training (more than currently required for PPL), to the point they could fly an IFR approach right to the ground.
It's absolutely an iron-clad, guaranteed certainty that someday you are going to get caught up there in the soup, or out in the dark, and you should have the training and the ability to fly yourself out of trouble.
As for taking away night VFR privileges, don't even think about it, FAA.
 
rocketflyer84 said:
They voted to leave, but haven't actually left yet.
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True, but the EASA part is somewhat independent of the rest. They agreed long ago to join EASA, but that's a slow ongoing process. Commercial operations are already EASA, while private (and smaller aircraft) will join by 2018. That was all prior to Brexit. How Brexit will affect the EASA status, if at all, is unclear. Feel free to critique, the preceding is based on Googling.
 
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azure said:
Smell test or no, it's true. More importantly, you can fly in actual instrument conditions, legally, without an instrument rating, as long as you can maintain both the minimum altitudes for your location and VFR minimums (visibility, distance from clouds). Others have described the conditions where that happens elsewhere in this thread: typically over open water in summer haze, or moonless dark night over a remote area with no lights below. In some parts of the country, the latter condition is very common at night.

The legal need for IFR is about visibility and cloud clearance minimums, in order to require ATC (or the big sky theory, in remote areas with Class G to 14,500) to maintain separation from other aircraft. It is much less about the need to keep pilots from losing control in conditions where visual references are not available.
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Wow. I had no idea.
 
AOPA trying to have a reason to exist. they've not had a real reason in some time.
 
Anyone who's taken off from Santa Barbara at night over the ocean will tell you how friggin black it gets. Zero visual cues and the classic Black Hole scenario. To get back to having references, you need to turn almost 180 degrees to the coast. If you can't do that on instruments, in a climb, you can get in trouble real quick. With the ****ty night training I got during my US PPL, I would argue that maybe 50% would be able to do that straight off the bat. Maybe I just had particularly bad night instruction, but it did meet the FAA req's. And if that's them met, they're simply not enough.

I've had 3 black hole encounters in my VFR days, including a go around at night in Mojave desert with zero visual cues and runway lights that were behind me and fading out. I'm sure that I would not be here today had I not at that time had some IR instruction. Others were not so lucky, like JFK jr and numerous others.
 
ircphoenix said:
Wow. I had no idea.
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And the FAA has been on record about that since 1984:

"To answer your first question, actual instrument conditions may occur in the case you described, a moonless night over the ocean with no discernible horizon, if use of the instruments is necessary to maintain adequate control over the aircraft. The determination as to whether flight by reference to instruments is necessary is somewhat subjective, and based in part on the sound judgement of the pilot. Note that, under Section 61.51(b)(3), the pilot must log the conditions of the flight. The log should include the reasons for determining that the flight was under actual instrument conditions in case the pilot later would be called on to prove that the actual instrument flight time logged was legitimate."
​
http://www.offhand.org/amb/pic-time.txt (See the Carr interpretation, a little over half-way down, or search for "moonless night")
 
As a VFR pilot there are some times when the sun is out you should not fly. Sometimes when the sun is not out, you should not fly, some times you can fly.
Risk Mangement
 
Seems like a good use of a flight review, or just grab a CFI and get an hour of instruction as ongoing training.
 
Night flying is a skill that is easily diminished. From what I've seen, most people get their license and barely every fly at night.
 
So night flying has 4 basic challenges over day that I see...

1. Loss of horizon reference- this is mainly an issue for those flying over water or in really sparse areas. I fly over farm country here in the midwest and there are so many tiny towns that you can plainly see lit up that this isn't of issue. You also potentially couldn't see clouds before flying into them at night... this is why I generally only fly on clear or at least clear below 12,000 type nights.

2. Navigation. I'll be honest, I've never become good at matching the light blobs I see on the ground to the charts... maybe I need to be higher? However I rarely go more than 5 or 10 minutes without having an airport beacon in sight. A little dead reckoning and pilotage should tell you what beacon you're likely looking at. Worst case, fly towards it and figure out how to land. That all said, most of us use GPS these days... and failing that most of us have VOR receivers. Get on flight following and it should be really hard to get lost... not impossible... but in my case it would take a complete electrical failure + my ipad and iphone dying all at the same time while not in view of a beacon I've not identified. If that fails there are still landmarks in the area I fly most often in that are visible on all but the darkest nights- the Mississippi river is usually my go-to as it would lead me right to my home base if need be. Obviously that doesn't work for everyone in every part of the world... as with all other flying, good judgement is required.

3. The landing- this is I believe the main reason for currency requirements. It can be difficult to judge the distance over the runway before you flare. Do this a few times and it's not a big deal.... honestly it wasn't huge for me the first time, just a bit of a rougher than usual touchdown. I have two personal rules to mitigate this problem. First, I never fly to an airport I've never been to before at night so that I know there's nothing I can't see to worry about. Second, I require a longer runway than I normally would so that I have room to overshoot if need it. Most of my night flights are back to my home base which easily meets both requirements. These are rules I came up with when I first started... at this point I'd probably be ok to letting one of them slide but that's only from having enough experience with it to be comfy.

4. The single engine failure scenario. For me this is the big one because it's the one I don't really have a good answer for dealing with it. Try to find a road by car headlights or see an open field(you actually can on a moonlit night), point at it, and hope it's what it looks like and there are no obstructions is the likely answer. Maybe glide to a field? The only comfort here is complete power failures don't happen very often and the engine doesn't care about light. I would say this is probably the most valid reason not to fly at night..... but an IFR rating isn't going to really be much help with this.


The bottom line as always is use your judgement. Know your region, your airplane, yourself, and think through the what-ifs.
 
I find it is much easier to spot traffic at night, it does take some getting used to when flying in a dark area without much to reference. During my training I banked too hard turning to base at night facing the mountain ranging my CFI called it to my attention and I had to correct, this left quite an impression on me and I won't make that mistake again.
 
I can't legally fly at night do to the red/green color deficiency and have literally only ever flown the minimum hours for the PPL. I'll just add this, I don't want the FAA legislating or governing any right we who hold private pilot licenses already have previously been deemed qualified to have. It's a slippery slope to go down and it won't be long before the FAA says something like, "you know, we don't think 1,000 foot ceilings are high enough. We want to raise it to 3,000 feet." Or, "you know, lots of pilots have entered into stall/ spin crashes during landings so it is now illegal for a single engine plane to land in a highly densely populated area."

It is never a good idea to willingly give up rights in the hopes that the greater good can be protected from there own stupidity and have instead there stupidity legislated into safety. It simply never plays out that way and we just sacrifice rights instead!
 
jspilot said:
I can't legally fly at night do to the red/green color deficiency and have literally only ever flown the minimum hours for the PPL. I'll just add this, I don't want the FAA legislating or governing any right we who hold private pilot licenses already have previously been deemed qualified to have. It's a slippery slope to go down and it won't be long before the FAA says something like, "you know, we don't think 1,000 foot ceilings are high enough. We want to raise it to 3,000 feet." Or, "you know, lots of pilots have entered into stall/ spin crashes during landings so it is now illegal for a single engine plane to land in a highly densely populated area."

It is never a good idea to willingly give up rights in the hopes that the greater good can be protected from there own stupidity and have instead there stupidity legislated into safety. It simply never plays out that way and we just sacrifice rights instead!
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The best way to avoid that is for people to stop crashing. Folks don't sit around the FAA dreaming up of ways to make things harder or take away privileges; in nearly every case it is due to political pressure from the white house or Congress. If anything, the FAA spends a lot more time explaining why the existing rules are sufficient and a knee jerk reaction is unlikely to result in safety benefits. Sometimes they're unsuccessful in doing so, as evidenced by the recent ATP changes.
 
Brad Z said:
The best way to avoid that is for people to stop crashing. Folks don't sit around the FAA dreaming up of ways to make things harder or take away privileges; in nearly every case it is due to political pressure from the white house or Congress. If anything, the FAA spends a lot more time explaining why the existing rules are sufficient and a knee jerk reaction is unlikely to result in safety benefits. Sometimes they're unsuccessful in doing so, as evidenced by the recent ATP changes.
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It's fairly short sighted to say that stopping airplane crashes will end governmental interference in aviation. How many pilots were having heart attacks or crashing from health related issues during the last 20 years? Yet, until recently, pilots had to endure medical exams and fork over money for the ability to legally fly planes! The FAR/AIM book is HUNDREDS of pages long already! If this is not a clear attempt to regulate safety, I simply don't know what is!

As with anything in life-- you can't regulate risk out of something effectively. You can legislate in safety standards( something I'm more likely to support.) Managing risk lies in the inherent decision every pilot makes when they enter the cockpit. By removing rights in a blanket way( I.e no one can fly VFR at night) all that is happening is safe pilots are having a right removed and there costs increased( because now they have to go to get an IFR rating to excessive the same right they were previously doing.)

If we want to deal in facts, far more plane crashes happen during the day. So by the logic of the "regulating" class- we should eliminate day time flying then! .... You see what I mean, once this starts it has no end. It's already started and we can see already, it has no end! What's perhaps most sad to me is people actually fall for the trap of believing, "well if something is risky we should look to the government to protect us." No, in fact, you should look to yourself to regulate your own risk tolerance!
 
jspilot said:
It's fairly short sighted to say that stopping airplane crashes will end governmental interference in aviation. How many pilots were having heart attacks or crashing from health related issues during the last 20 years? Yet, until recently, pilots had to endure medical exams and fork over money for the ability to legally fly planes! The FAR/AIM book is HUNDREDS of pages long already! If this is not a clear attempt to regulate safety, I simply don't know what is!

As with anything in life-- you can't regulate risk out of something effectively. You can legislate in safety standards( something I'm more likely to support.) Managing risk lies in the inherent decision every pilot makes when they enter the cockpit. By removing rights in a blanket way( I.e no one can fly VFR at night) all that is happening is safe pilots are having a right removed and there costs increased( because now they have to go to get an IFR rating to excessive the same right they were previously doing.)

If we want to deal in facts, far more plane crashes happen during the day. So by the logic of the "regulating" class- we should eliminate day time flying then! .... You see what I mean, once this starts it has no end. It's already started and we can see already, it has no end!
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I'm saying that if GA stays under the radar and out of the headlines from accidents, we're more likely to continue to enjoy the freedoms we now have. The last push to re-evaluate night VFR happened after the JFK Jr. accident. If we have one or two more high profile accidents like that under similar conditions, you better believe someone is going to be callling on the FAA to "fix" the problem. Like I said, we really need to stop crashing planes, simple as that.
 
RotorDude said:
One insidious night flying menace that is not talked about much is the sudden fog on short final. This is where you fly a normal VFR pattern in apparently excellent VMC and everything looks fine down below, yet you find yourself in pea soup (radiation fog?) just before you start the flare. It's happened to me a few times, and fortunately being IFR rated and current I managed to keep my wits, maintain my attitude, and land normally (albeit with a higher pulse rate). But I can imagine a VFR-only pilot encountering the same situation who might get spooked and not fare as well. Perhaps one more reason all those other countries require the special night rating (which I don't support, but understand).
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Yep, had that happen once. Asked my wife to turn off the landing light as it was blindingly bright out front. About the time she did, I touched down and rolled into the clear. Don't think I was instrument rated at the time; just held the flare, squinted, looked out the side window and hoped real hard as a go around wouldn't have helped. Fortunately it was my home base, and I was intimately familiar with all 3000' of runway and exactly how far away the trees were at the other end.

Had it happen the other way around too, flying back to visit her during my relocation. Landed at night, clear skies, kind of cool in WV while wearing my Alabama-weather short sleeve shirt. Dad blamed landing light burned out in flight (it worked during preflight and takeoff at dusk, dead upon landing). Just after the nose wheel touched, whoosh! into fog that wasn't visible from the pattern. Turned around and back-taxied holding my flashlight out the storm window, shivering in the cold. Cleared the fog just before the runway exit.

The joys of night flying!

Just this summer, went to my normal grass strip at the beach, which has had lights for the past ~ 4 years. It's really just a narrow slot in the pine trees. Easy to find in the dark, well lit, and establishing downwind was easy. Couldn't see the wind sock, so used the GPS to confirm groundspeed was slower than airspeed, meaning I was on downwind and not upwind. Turned base at 45° to the first light, continued descent and lost the runway lights, blocked by all the other pine trees. Took me three tries to line up where I could land, as the other lights in the area would pop in and out of visibility as I descended on base. Touchdown was eventually unremarkable, just past the tree-and-power-line-induced displaced threshold.

Y'all fly safe out there!
 
Brad Z said:
I'm saying that if GA stays under the radar and out of the headlines from accidents, we're more likely to continue to enjoy the freedoms we now have. The last push to re-evaluate night VFR happened after the JFK Jr. accident. If we have one or two more high profile accidents like that under similar conditions, you better believe someone is going to be callling on the FAA to "fix" the problem. Like I said, we really need to stop crashing planes, simple as that.
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I'm stumped by your logic. Of course not crashing a plane is the best way to keep GA under the radar. What does that have to do with the FAA attempting to regulate safety and interference with our rights as pilots? It seems like your solution is, "if we stop all plane crashes just by luck, the FAA and the government will leave us alone." Again, I just don't concur. It's been proven that this is not true( see the medical reforms that were recently overturned as evidence of previously assured interference.) The rules and regulations governing GA is seriously out of control-- how many airports now have "noise abatement procedures" at airports in which the local community complained about planes being too loud?!?! Often these Noise abatement procedures place pilots in the uncomfortable position of feeling like unwanted intruders into the area-- while that same area generally prospers, in part, because of that same airport they complain about. I'll site the absurd costs of new airplanes because the, absolutely unbelievable amount of certification a certified aircraft must go through all because some politician believed it would make flying safer( meanwhile I'm not hearing of any real difference between new model planes vs old model planes and the relative safety of either.) Governmental interference for the greater good, benefits virtually no one. In a local example, East Hampton airport has recently come under attack by locals who want to shut it down. In an absurd display of "the danger local airports posses" a news report was run during which the news crew reported a fuel truck was left unattended and "dangerously close" to airplanes while passengers were freely able to walk right past the truck.... This was a real story and people were up in arms about the lack of security at the airport... This story is purely scare tactics and could be told simply as, "East Hampton airport operated exactly how every other GA airport in the nation does." So let's say the people who want to "increase safety regulations" win out and the airport is not allowed to use fuel trucks anymore. Eventually, pilots suffer, the FBO closes down and maybe the airport too.... But at least everyone is "safer!"

A link to the story referenced above:

http://sagharboronline.com/easthamptonairportvisithighlightsconflict/
 
jordane93 said:
Night flying is a skill that is easily diminished. From what I've seen, most people get their license and barely every fly at night.
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I haven't flown at night in a long time but I've been thinking about grabbing a CFi and getting some practice in, then take a few night flights. the wx here the past week has been flippin perfect for it.
 
jspilot said:
...If we want to deal in facts, far more plane crashes happen during the day. So by the logic of the "regulating" class- we should eliminate day time flying then! ....
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What counts are accident rates, not raw numbers of accidents.
 
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