Fearless Tower
Touchdown! Greaser!
Anyone familiar with the decision making process that the FAA used on this one?
There have been a few threads already on the specifics, but the regs say you must be night current to carry pax 1 hour after sunset, but you are okay to carry pax up to 1 hr after the sun goes down. Why? Based on recent experience, I can tell you that it ain't that much different 30-45 min after the sun sets.
I started thinking about this after my flight on Friday. Took my wife up in the 170 to fly up to FUL for a weekend trip to Magic Kingdom. As usual, my wife took plenty of time to get ready so it was late afternoon before we departed. Flight plan had us arriving about 10 minutes after sunset. Now, what I hadn't accounted for was how freakin' long it was going to take to climb to 6k in the fully loaded 170. With the winds aloft courtresy of the Santa Anas, we were only doing about 55-60 kts ground speed in the climb. End result was shooting the VOR approach about 25-30 minutes after sunset.
Now, here's the thing - 30 minutes after sunset is plenty dark and the ground environment is definitely shifted to the nightime look (where the airport lights are dwarfed compared to the city lights). We made it safely on the ground without any issues, but let's just say that if I hadn't flown that approach in the daytime/been familiar with the airport and had my handheld gps, it would have been a very uncomfortable situation. As it was, the pucker factor was a bit higher than I like it.
All of this was perfectly legal, although as we have discussed before what is legal is not necessarily safe.
But, I am curious as to why the FAA thinks that up to 1 hr after sunset is okay to be flying pax without night currency? Wouldn't limiting it to Civil Twilight (typically 30 minutes after sunset) be more reasonable?
There have been a few threads already on the specifics, but the regs say you must be night current to carry pax 1 hour after sunset, but you are okay to carry pax up to 1 hr after the sun goes down. Why? Based on recent experience, I can tell you that it ain't that much different 30-45 min after the sun sets.
I started thinking about this after my flight on Friday. Took my wife up in the 170 to fly up to FUL for a weekend trip to Magic Kingdom. As usual, my wife took plenty of time to get ready so it was late afternoon before we departed. Flight plan had us arriving about 10 minutes after sunset. Now, what I hadn't accounted for was how freakin' long it was going to take to climb to 6k in the fully loaded 170. With the winds aloft courtresy of the Santa Anas, we were only doing about 55-60 kts ground speed in the climb. End result was shooting the VOR approach about 25-30 minutes after sunset.
Now, here's the thing - 30 minutes after sunset is plenty dark and the ground environment is definitely shifted to the nightime look (where the airport lights are dwarfed compared to the city lights). We made it safely on the ground without any issues, but let's just say that if I hadn't flown that approach in the daytime/been familiar with the airport and had my handheld gps, it would have been a very uncomfortable situation. As it was, the pucker factor was a bit higher than I like it.
All of this was perfectly legal, although as we have discussed before what is legal is not necessarily safe.
But, I am curious as to why the FAA thinks that up to 1 hr after sunset is okay to be flying pax without night currency? Wouldn't limiting it to Civil Twilight (typically 30 minutes after sunset) be more reasonable?