The Black-Hole Approach

Jim Wolper

Wednesday, January 25, 2023 at 01:45 PM ET

Verified

Key Takeaways:

"Black-hole" approaches, occurring at night over unlit terrain, are highly hazardous as the severe lack of visual ground references makes it nearly impossible for pilots to accurately judge altitude and attitude, significantly increasing accident risk.
Pilots must proactively counter complacency and understand visual illusions, relying strictly on instruments for control and descent rate management, as external cues are unreliable and unexpected turbulence can further complicate conditions.
Key safety strategies include treating all black-hole approaches as instrument flights by using pre-planned procedures (e.g., overflying the runway, planned go-arounds, specific landing techniques), as adherence to structured instrument guidance provides essential safety layers often missing in VFR black-hole scenarios.

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Near Hernandez, N.M., headed south, I noticed the moon rising to my left. It reminded me of Ansel Adams’s iconic 1941 photograph, Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico. I took out my phone and tried to snap a picture. My more artistic friends might be amused by the effort.

Adams used a large-format camera with a very long exposure. Details on the ground are clear. There’s a tiny village surrounded by scrub land, with hills visible in the distance. My quick exposure through a glare-filled pane of Plexiglas showed none of those details. The ground was completely dark, even though the moon was up.