Night Flying

I like flying at night.


There is something almost magical about the way the lights play across the landscape, from cities such as this, there the lights are so bright that they reflect from the underside of the wings of my airplane

to rural areas, where the houses can be widely separated and you can see the headlights and taillights of the cars and trucks making their ways down the the country roads.

One night, many years ago, I flew over a very busy highway after dark. When I looked down the highway, I could see a nearly solid river of white light on one side of the dark median strip and another nearly solid river of red lights on the other side. Thousands and thousands of vehicles, going to work, from work or to the stores. Every so often I could see the yellow flashing lights of a tow truck. Sometimes I saw the flashing red rights of an ambulance or the blue lights of the police and I hoped that somebody's life was not suddenly taking a very bad turn.

Over the years, at night, I can see the lights of the proliferation of cell phone towers, so many now that at times they don't show up on the charts. A night flight is all it takes to show that the old practice of scud-running is now a Very Bad Idea. I've seen Christmas decorations that were so bright that they were visible from miles away. I'd hate to be paying the electric bill for those.

The landscape looks so peaceful at night as I fly over houses, where some families are sitting down to dinner and maybe at another family, things are not so good, but you can't tell that from 2,000 feet up. It all looks serene.

Flying at night in a single-engine airplane has its share of risk. If the engine quits, you can't see where you are going to land until you have no choice; all you can do is aim for the areas with no lights and hope that when you get down there, you are looking at a nicely mown field instead of a stand of trees. Nights with a bright moon are better for that and so is having snow on the ground.

I live a lot further from my airplane now than I'd like, so I don't fly at night anywhere as much as I used to, as I like being home and in bed before it gets too late.

But I do like flying at night.