Usability of VFR night rating

Not much for an entire country.

Well, it’s not a very big country, is it? Incidentally, I have done quite a few NVFR flights in Austria, mostly coming from the UK and going into LOWW. I love NVFR, although haven’t done a lot in Europe. Different thing in the US, where I use it quite a bit – love to fly in the L.A. area at night. That said, you could argue that this isn’t really ‘night’ VFR, as the endless urban sprawl of SoCal lights up the night to quite an amazing degree.

Anyway, back to the OP and his question – is it worth it? Absolutely, yes! First off, as said above, NVFR is a great way to fly. Secondly, you do get some training and practical use of instrument flying, as to all practical intents and purposes, that’s what it is. I would definitely say go for it.

Even tiny Belgium has six, though EBBR will be found over expensive too, by most.
The others are EBOS, EBKT, EBAW, EBCI, EBLG

Agree with Peter.

Night flying over built up areas with lots of light is easy. When it gets hairy real quick is when very few or no lights are available. That’s when you need to have solid instrument skills, or else you can get yourself in trouble real quick. Not saying you need an IR, but have at least 5hrs of pure instrument training and can keep heading, do standard rate turns in climbs and descents on instruments alone – and be able to do it partial panel.

I remember the first time I departed solo out of Santa Barbara at night. The rwy is just by the coast and you depart right out over the Pacific. As you lose visual cues and this all encompassing blackness fills all around you, it can be pretty intimidating. Another one where I really scared myself was a go-around to a pitch black desert airport called Inyokern at midnight. No fun at all and had I not had some basic IR training by then, I would have probably balled it up.

That said, night flying is great. Calm, smooth air and views to die for. I would not do it over mountains even in a twin, but everything else I’m comfortable with.

I’m just chicken, I suppose. Most twins have single engine ceilings that are below the peaks here out in the west. When I go up over the LA basin here at night I see a million single engine planes out joyriding. They have bigger bal*s than me – if the donk quits, their choice is to land on a packed highway or into houses.

This is the reason I fly twins – I just can’t feel comfortable in a piston single over populated areas. I’m a nervous flier.

Why? An engine failure at night seems a pretty nasty thing under any circumstances

That one is always a good discussion…

I have seen stats from the USA which don’t indicate that night flight is a big problem, but that’s probably because most cases where a SE plane goes down are not caused by an engine failure, but by running out of juice.

Also, pilots are likely to be risk-compensating, by avoiding mountains etc at night.

Personally, I have used the night capability to get home shortly after it got dark, a good number of times, e.g.

(that pic was at some altitude, so down below it would have been very dark)
but it never suited me to fly properly at night because normally I depart early in the morning to get the best weather and to arrive in time to do something useful with what’s left of the day, whereas if one arrives say 10pm all one can do is try to sort out the hotel and collapse into bed…

When I go up over the LA basin here at night I see a million single engine planes out joyriding

That’ll be me then! Have to say L.A. at night is one of my biggest joys in flying.

That said, I’m with you on the KSBA departure – that black hole is a bit disconcerting……

Why? An engine failure at night seems a pretty nasty thing under any circumstances.

The whole idea of night flying in a GA aircraft is to not pile up risks. Flying at night adds extra risk (because its dark) and you should be careful with what other risks you add to the mission profile.

When flying over mountains you don’t have the option to descent to a lower altitude, as there is terrain below.

With a twin you might not be able to keep altitude when flying on one engine, so you’re exposed to the same risk as flying with a SEP.

The added risks of mountains flying are: terrain, Icing (you’ll be at subzero temps), turbulence, oxygen failure.

I don’t use it very often, but flying at night is fun.

It is called Night Rating again with EASA after a brief period of JAR Night Qualification (NQ)

Between the time I got my night rating and my IFR rating, about 25% of my travel flying were wholly or partially in darkness. So I would say that the night rating is quite useful.