Congratulations! You made it this far in your training. Night Flying has many rewards such as being able to fly in smoother air when the Sun has set; being able to see distant cities/towns from many miles away for navigation; and the pure joy of seeing a spectacular natural occurrence such as the Northern Lights or even shooting stars from up close.
Staying Awake
This is arguable the biggest challenge even for experienced airline pilots. What helps is to try and sleep even a few hours before your flight. Then you can be well rested for your journey.
Bring along a thermos with coffee and sip it at regular intervals helps. Just avoid that caffeine or sugar crash by pacing yourself.
If you have 2 pilots flying then ask the other pilot if he/she can take control for 20 mins while you take a nap. Once you do awaken from you nap give yourself 10 mins to settle back in before you take control.
Avoiding Thunderstorms
It can be almost impossible to detect storms at night as it blends into the night. Many instances of pilots reporting accidentally flying into thunderstorms happen at night. Best, to do a thorough weather analysis before you go flying and avoid a certain route if there is forecast of thunderstorms.
Of course, if your airplane has built in weather radar then you can pick your way around thunderstorms. But, never rely on the weather radar app on your smartphone as that weather is not realtime weather detection.
I personally had 2 bad experiences flying around thunderstorms at night. One was in a Cessna 172 as a flight instructor where the bad weather was over my destination airport so we had to divert to a nearby airport and wait it out. The second was as an airline Captain where a huge line of thunderstorms was moving due to the upper level winds being faster than predicted. So, in this case I had to check the fuel requirements with dispatch and make a 100 nautical mile deviation from the route.
Knowing Your Height Above Ground/ Correct Glide Slope on Approach
“The airplane doesn’t know it is dark outside. But you certainly will.” Thats a true saying. It’s very important to know both your height above ground and the depth perception at night.
Always know your height above the ground especially at night. The navigation charts publish the highest obstacle clearance heights for the area you’re flying over. Always keep that in the back of your mind. Incase, you find yourself in an uncomfortable situation, you can climb up to that altitude and know that you will not hit anything. Especially, when flying around mountainous terrain in western Canada.
Another important concept with regards to height is your depth perception. What I mean is that at night there are so many illusions that can harm a pilot on approach to land. One being the Black Hole Effect which can result in the pilot flying a too-low approach and crashing short of the runway.
The other illusion being the Runway Lights Intensity. If the runway lights are set too bright it can cause you to think you are low and then approach higher than necessary.
Summary
Night flying has many rewards to a pilot from lesser turbulence, the ability to spot far away cities easily, to incredible natural phenomenon such as the Northern Lights.
However, it does come with it’s challenges and majority of them you will learn with your flight instructor. It’s important to keep all these hazards in mind every time you fly at night.
Fly Safe!