Flight Safety

10 Tips for Better Night Flying

• Arrive early and preflight the airplane in the daylight.
• Don’t bring a flashlight, bring two.
• Organize the cockpit prior to takeoff so you aren’t trying to find things in the dark.
• Be familiar with procedures for radio, alternator and electrical failures. You won’t enjoy reading the pilot’s handbook by flashlight.
• Practice locating and operating cockpit controls and switches with your eyes closed.
• Review tower light gun signals (FAR 91.125). There’s a flashing green light on short final – what do you do?
• Use your flashlight to check engine gauges. It’s no excuse to fly along without oil pressure just because the gauges are poorly lit.
• Remember: Taxi ways are blue, runways aren’t.
• Practice night proficiency landings with the landing light off.
• On a “pilot-controlled lighting” runway, click the lights again when turning final. Having the lights go out during your flare is a poor way to end your flight.

Additional Common Advice for Night Landings:

• Don’t look down where the landing light is pointing. Instead, focus your vision at the end of the runway.
• When the far runway end lights appear to be rising above the airplane, begin your flare.
• With peripheral vision, use the runway edge lights as your artificial horizon.
• Continue a normal flare until the airplane settles between the lights and onto the runway.

SOURCES: Plane & Pilot
COMPILED: TxDOT Aviation Division, 2006