Night Flying Question

74Romeo

74Romeo

Well-Known Member
I've got a few questions regarding night flying recording and requirements. According to the FARs, night is defined as the time between the end of evening civil twilight and the beginning of morning civil twilight. So let's say that the end of evening civil twilight is 8:15pm and someone landed at 8:30pm, they could record 15 min of night flying and a night landing correct? However, the night landing would not count towards the three full stop landings required to carry passengers during the time period of 1 hour after sunset (let's say sunset is at 8:50pm) and 1 hour before sunrise, right? I'm assuming these rules are set in stone even when the sky is overcast and pitch black before the hour after sunset occurs.
 
That essentially correct. But assuming that you are a pilot who is not trying to meet a "night landing" requirement for a certificate or rating and you only care about currency, the only "night landings" that are relevant are the ones at least an hour after sunset. To avoid confusion, those are the ones you should record and leave the other ones alone.

Of course, for currency, you =do= have to pair it up with a "1-hr after sunset" takeoff, don't you?
 
MidlifeFlyer said:
That essentially correct. But assuming that you are a pilot who is not trying to meet a "night landing" requirement for a certificate or rating and you only care about currency, the only "night landings" that are relevant are the ones at least an hour after sunset. To avoid confusion, those are the ones you should record and leave the other ones alone.
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Wouldn't that look a bit odd recording night flying without a night landing? I want to eventually get my instrument license but I'm not currently training for one. Does logging night flying even matter unless it occurs an hour after sunset for currency requirements for carrying passengers at night?
 
74Romeo said:
Wouldn't that look a bit odd recording night flying without a night landing? I want to eventually get my instrument license but I'm not currently training for one. Does logging night flying even matter unless it occurs an hour after sunset for currency requirements for carrying passengers at night?
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It doesn't look odd at all. There is nothing that says you even have to log any landings at all except for currency. If you fly in the situation that you described earlier (flying after civil twilight, but before 1 hour after sunset), then there's absolutely no point in logging it at a night landing because it does you no good since it can't be counted for currency, and as Midlife said, it helps avoid confusion as to whether or not the landing was full stop, etc.

Logging night flying is a good thing if you're ever plan to fly corporate. You have to have minimum amounts of night flying time.
 
74Romeo said:
Does logging night flying even matter unless it occurs an hour after sunset for currency requirements for carrying passengers at night?
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Sure it does. The commercial certificate has some night flight requirements that don't need to follow the special passenger-carrying currency rule.

For example. solo requirement

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5 hours in night VFR conditions with 10 takeoffs and 10 landings (with each landing involving a flight in the traffic pattern) at an airport with an operating control tower.
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doesn't have to follow the 1 hour after rule, not even the landings.
 
Kingairer said:
Night is when its dark.
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I like that. There gets to be a point where you decide what night is if you're flying at night as often as you fly in the daytime. Pulling out the chart to see when the sun legally set gets tedious after awhile. I just conservatively log my night time. If it gets to where I can start to see stuff more than just lights after my night is about over I say it'd daytime and quit counting it towards night. Log everything conservatively and no one is going to ask you questions.
 
Night flight can be logged at sunset to sunrise. For currency, you must log 3 t/o and landings 1 hr. after sunset - 1 hr. before sunrise to a full stop in the same category and class. Its that simple. You can carry passengers :59 after sunset and :59 before sunrise if you're not night current is my understanding.
 
Or you could do it at uncontrolled airports where no one is watching?

Do towers take note of tailnumbers or something? Time of flight certainly isn't in the logbook.
 
74Romeo said:
Wouldn't that look a bit odd recording night flying without a night landing?
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No. You can be flying with another rated pilot, and you may have acted as PIC during the takeoff and en-route and relinquished your PIC responsibilities to the other pilot during the night phase and have that person do the landing. You log up to your PIC time, and the other pilot picks up the rest of the time and logs the landing.
 
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