Flying at Night Over Water Invites Disaster

As a boy growing up in an Irish-Catholic culture, I thought of limbo as a place of darkness and silence, a place where everything is suspended and you are totally, desperately alone, awaiting judgment day. Later in life, as a fledgling naval aviator, I came to know that there is another, real limbo. It is the same place that John F. Kennedy Jr. flew into this past weekend.

Any experienced pilot knows this place well, especially Navy pilots. You find this place at night, flying over the ocean, when fog or haze or low visibility obscures the moonlight and the stars. Experienced pilots avoid this limbo. Military and airline pilots, the most highly trained and experienced of all pilots, are not permitted to fly the type of flight plan that Kennedy flew under visual flight rules, or VFR. Long ago, the military responded to the inherent dangers of VFR by prohibiting it, except under operational necessity or other special considerations. For reasons that involve not just safety but also both economics and insurance requirements, airline pilots also are not permitted to carry out a planned VFR flight. This kind of flying (night VFR) is usually avoided entirely by general aviation pilots who are experienced instrument flyers, such as pilots who fly corporate jets. It is only the least qualified pilots, flying the least sophisticated aircraft, who find themselves in this dangerous limbo.

At low altitude--below 5,000 feet--over the ocean at night, there is nothing to see that can orient the pilot’s senses to the horizontal, except for the moon and stars. The horizon is where the stars stop, and the blackness--the ocean--begins. When the clouds obscure the stars or low visibility obscures everything beyond a few miles around the aircraft, there is nothing to tell the pilot which way is up. Experienced pilots simply “go to the gauges,” i.e., begin to fly the aircraft almost totally on instruments, relying primarily on the “artificial horizon” on the panel before them to control the aircraft. Pilots know that they cannot rely on their senses to know which way is up and whether or not the aircraft’s wings are level.

Kennedy had enough training and experience to know all of this, and he surely knew the difficulty that he would encounter if he found himself flying in “marginal VFR” at night over the ocean. He had started instrument training, and he had chartered aircraft at other times when he felt it necessary due to weather conditions, i.e., when he knew he lacked the ability to fly himself. There are reports that he planned to fly earlier in the day (during daylight) but that rush-hour traffic and having to wait for his sister-in-law caused them to delay takeoff. It is virtually certain that he knew exactly what the weather conditions were, as this information was readily available to him. So, why did he go?

Was it foolhardy? Was it irresponsible? Was it negligent? Perhaps it was all these things, but it is also not uncommon. VFR flying in marginal weather is permitted under the rules of civil aviation in this country. It is time to stop this insane laxity. VFR flying should be restricted to much better weather conditions than those that currently are permitted, especially at night and over water.

Today’s rules were established when aircraft were far less numerous and far less powerful. Kennedy should not have been permitted to take off and execute the flight plan that he flew under the weather conditions that existed.

The Aircraft Owners and Pilots Assn. would fight tooth and nail over this issue. General aviation pilots want as much freedom as they can get to fly anywhere and any time. They believe that pilots are the best judges of whether to fly.

The time is long past to permit this fiction to endure.