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Challenges faced by pilots when flying and taxiing aircrafts during nighttime

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Challenges faced by pilots when flying and taxiing aircrafts during nighttime
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Jonathan E. Hendry U.S & Loyalty Journalist | Simple Flying

Spotting airports at night is particularly challenging since they blend with the surrounding dark landscape. Pilots must ensure they have the correct airport beacon to avoid landing at the wrong airport at night. Taxiing at night is more challenging, as airports lack overhead lighting and forward visibility is reduced. The majority of pilots' flight time is logged during daylight hours. Training is required during the daytime; many more passenger flights occur between sunrise and sunset. Aside from cargo pilots, who fly many more nighttime flights, roughly 60-75% of an airline pilot's flight time occurs during the daytime. Flying at night, though easier in some ways, comes with challenges.

While it may not be too different during the cruise, navigating at and around airports can be challenging. This article will discuss two key points: finding the airport and taxiing.

Identifying an airport at nighttime is a skill that pilots develop during training and continue to hone throughout their careers. As unbelievable as it may seem to the non-flying population, spotting airports at night (even large airports) is significantly more difficult than finding airports during the day. While airports stand out during daylight hours, they disappear at night. This is especially true if not located in an urban center; airports are many square miles of dark concrete and level terrain that easily blend perfectly with a non-urban background at night.

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Runway lighting makes the landing area easy to see, but this is only true when pilots fly within 30 degrees of the runway's extended centerline. Most of the lights at airports are not omnidirectional but are intended to display the surface when viewed straight on.

Spotting an airport at night usually starts with pilots looking for the airport's rotating beacon, a white and green alternating light that is one of the few omnidirectional lights on the field. Once pilots know where the airport beacon is, they have the context to continue looking for the runway they have been designated to land on.

"As obvious as it sounds," one pilot noted, "pilots need to make sure they have the correct airport beacon in sight at nighttime." There are countless examples of airline-serving airports near civilian airports with beacons that look identical from the air. Airline pilots have lined up (and sometimes landed) at incorrect airports because of this similarity.

Visual approaches to smaller airports at night are some of the most demanding approaches pilots fly. This underscores why it's crucial to back up every visual approach with an instrument approach to ensure accuracy.

Taxiing planes at night presents its own set of difficulties compared to daylight hours. Even when pilots are intimately familiar with an airport, nighttime conditions provide additional challenges when operating on the ground due to reduced visibility and lack of overhead lighting away from terminal buildings.

"Pilots tend to taxi slower at unfamiliar airports at night than in daytime," another pilot shared, "to give themselves time to identify and confirm taxiways."

Many pilots now use moving targets on taxi diagrams for added situational awareness, which proves beneficial during low-visibility operations.

Flying visual approaches and taxiing at night come with added challenges; however, spotting other traffic and getting shortcuts from ATC can be easier after dark. Like anything else, flying at night has tradeoffs compared to flying during daytime hours.

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