Flying a Plane at Night

In the early days of flying, looking out of the window was the only way to do it. But just as having Sat Nav in a car now is normal, so it is normal for a passenger plane to have all the equipment needed for international navigation and flying in any weather conditions including darkness.

The common sense point of view is that it must be safe to fly at night otherwise we’d hear about it. It must be safe to fly at night otherwise people wouldn’t take night flights. It has to be safe to fly at night otherwise flying between Europe and Australia would take days. Flying at night is normal and safe.

On The Ground

When taxi-ing at night a pilot follows coded colour-coded lights to show the taxiways and runways. Red lights show pilots where to stop, blue and green lights show the taxiways, white lights show the runways. When seen from the cockpit they appear much brighter to the pilots than to you because they are tilted up towards the pilots’ eyes. To the untrained eye no doubt it looks bewildering in much the same way that railways signals look incomprehensible to me. Often ATC instructions will be ” Speedbird 123, follow the greens to Holding Point runway 28.” Despite that permission, if a pilot encounters a red Stop Bar across the taxiway then the procedure is to stop, sometimes the stop bar will extinguish as you approach it. Although it seems complicated it is surprising that as a pilot progresses through his or her career, being exposed first to small airports and then gradually more busy ones the process of taxiing at night becomes instinctive.

As the plane lines up on the runway the pilots are presented with a dazzling array of lights, centre line guidance edge lights angle of approach indicators, touch down zone markers and more. Every airport has to conform to international regulations and any differences would be due to the standards of automatic landing systems that aircraft require. Clearly, an airport in places where the weather is generally good would require less complex lighting systems than a European country where winter fog is commonplace. Thos are the facts… from this pilots point of view… but from an artistic/emotional point of view airport lighting is something that I find compellingly beautiful.

In the Air

If it’s beautiful to see airport lights on the ground the view of the night sky is breathtaking. The view of the ground at night is something that more of us experience now. Views from the orbiting space station show the centres of human activity and the vast areas of unoccupied land. Although the view from 5 miles up isn’t quite as extensive as the view from 50 miles up it is nevertheless a privilege to witness. For me, the most startling thing at night is to see the moon and stars rise or set more quickly than they appear to when you see it from the ground. Shooting stars look brighter and there are few greater sights than to see the clarity of the night sky, for example when crossing the Atlantic at night. The very occasional light from a ship, the dim lights of the cockpit and the vastness of the dark sky littered with stars.

I have seen the Northern Lights many times but on one of my flights, they stayed visible for over 45 minutes. No description could embrace everything one feels and sees on witnessing this phenomenon.

How we fly at night

The first thing I need to say is that we don’t look out of the cockpit window to navigate during the daylight hours so it’s no surprise when I say we don’t do it at night either. We always fly by reference to our instruments. The only difference to me when flying at night is that it’s darker. In the same way that you adjust your driving technique at night so I change mine for flying at night. Landing a small plane at night is interesting because without any texture to the surroundings, everything is defined by single light points and when landing the ground appears to be much higher than it really is, so an inexperienced pilot needs to learn to sink into the runway rather than land at the apparent height of it. On a big plane with powerful landing lights and with a much more experienced crew, there is less of a problem. In fact, there is NO problem.

What you didn't know

Taking off on a cloudy night is fun. As the plane lifts off there is nothing to see out of the front windows, until, the wing lights illuminate the clouds ahead. The reflection from and the apparent brightness of the clouds would surprise most people and it is one of the few times that you get an impression of speed when flying at night. Because we are required to keep the landing lights on until we are at 10,000 feet there is a lot to see!

When planes pass each other in opposite directions at night it is customary to flash the landing lights to acknowledge sight of the other plane. But it is only a custom from years ago and serves no practical purpose nowadays. Unlike driving on UK roads where it is usual to flash the lights to indicate that an overtaking car can pull in again we don’t do that when we’re flying. Planes don’t overtake each other at the same height.

Best wishes,

Captain Keith

Shopping Basket