Dark Acceleration

I like to fly at night. The air generally is smoother, theres less traffic, the ATC frequencies are not as busy and ground illumination, the moon and the stars can compete in one of the best light shows youll ever see. Of course, humans were never meant to fly in the first place, and we often have difficulty actually seeing things at night. So we need to be mindful of night flyings risks and adopt procedures or limitations mitigating them.

Joseph E. (Jeb) Burnside

Sunday, June 02, 2019 at 12:00 AM ET

Verified

SpaceShipTwo was released from the mothership at 51,000 feet. Courtesy Virgin Galactic

Key Takeaways:

Night flying presents significant risks due to human visual limitations and the absence of clear visual cues, making pilots highly susceptible to spatial disorientation, especially during takeoff and initial climb.
Pilots must diligently rely on and correctly interpret modern flight instrumentation to maintain proper aircraft attitude and trajectory, as external visual references are unreliable or absent at night.
Specific physiological illusions, such as the somatogravic and inversion illusions, can cause pilots to misperceive aircraft pitch during night takeoffs, leading to dangerous control inputs if instruments are not trusted.

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I like to fly at night. The air generally is smoother, there’s less traffic, the ATC frequencies are not as busy and ground illumination, the moon and the stars can compete in one of the best light shows you’ll ever see. Of course, humans were never meant to fly in the first place, and we often have difficulty actually seeing things at night. So we need to be mindful of night flying’s risks and adopt procedures or limitations mitigating them.

It helps to have a firm understanding of how human eyes (don’t) work at night and how the lack of visual cues can scramble our internal gyro instruments to the point we can’t tell which way is up. We especially need to remember that the acceleration of takeoff and initial climb can confuse our internal gyros, so we perceive the airplane is climbing when it’s really in level flight. Or descending.