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 introduces significant risks due to human visual limitations and the strong potential for spatial disorientation, especially during takeoff and initial climb in dark conditions.
Pilots are susceptible to illusions like somatogravic and inversion, which can cause them to incorrectly perceive aircraft attitude and make dangerous control inputs, such as pushing the nose down.
Modern flight instrumentation is critical for maintaining orientation when external visual cues are absent, requiring diligent use to establish and maintain the correct aircraft attitude.
A fatal King Air accident serves as a stark example of the dangers of not relying on flight instruments during a dark night takeoff, leading to a failure to maintain terrain clearance.

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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.