What is Night Time?

"That's a night landing, right?" - Naughty pilot landing at sunset

A spectacular sunset on the Coastal Empire

The definition of night has many pilots confused... so confused that they end up logging currency or night time illegally, forming contradictory arguments that would make an FAA inspector raise their eyebrow (and mine too).

There are three defitions for night time, and they relate to logging night time, logging night currency, and equipment usage. They are actually easier than you think, so let's look at these closely.

Logging Night Time

One of your logbook entries is "night". That is because there is a minimum hour requirement to receive your certificate. Moreover, it's a measure of the type of flying you do. You have no idea how many pilots are scared of flying at night, and their total night time is a measure of their risk management capabilities, and more. All right, enough of this mumbo jumbo. Let's get to it.

You can log night time from the end of civil twilight to the start of morning civil twilight.

The official reference is a definition in 14 CFR Part 1:

Civil twilight is the time at which the center of the sun is 6 degrees below the horizon. Oh, that's helpful, isn't it! Unless you're an astrophysicist with some special equipment, you can simply google when night time officially starts in the geographic position you're in (yeah, if this is a stellar measurement, your position on the globe matters). Here is how you Google it!

So, today, March 24, 2026, you can start logging night time after 8:02PM, or 20:02. Ok, easier than you thought, huh? Many pilots think they need to be observing the sun's position to determine when to start logging night time. That is obviously incorrect, since all you need to do is fly and then look back at Google (sorry, I mean the Almanac) and calculate the difference.

Turning your Lights On

Per 14 CFR 91.209, you must have your position and anti-collision lights engaged anytime between sunset and sunrise.

Well, what is sunset, you might ask. There is another astrophysics defintion, related to the tangential position of the sun with the horizon. Good news for you is that it's published everywhere on everyday items, like your iPhone:

Yup, looks like today sunset is at 19:39 local. So, after 19:39 (that is 7:39 PM for you gusy who don't know the 24h system which is the best and you must learn it I'm not sure why you didn't or why the USA doesn't follow that system), you must turn on your position and anti-collision lights.

For more information on lighting, exceptions, and so forth, please read this article.

Logging Night Currency

Night currency is required to carry persons on your airplane while you're pilot in command (PIC). Please note that the regulation once said "passengers". Now, it says "persons", which makes things harder for other crew members, like an instructor. We could get into a massive argument about this topic, but suffice to say I spend a coupel hours talking to AOPA pilot services about it and we came down with a pretty solid conclusion. But that's for another time.

Where was I?

Ah yes, night currency. The FAA wants you to be absolutely sure you are ready to carry passengers at night. To do that, they want to make sure it's really really dark outside. No glimpse of a sunset, not even a rogue ray from our sun. FAR 61.57(b) specifies that:

Night currency needs to be done at least one hour after sunset and no later than one hour before sunrise.

Again, refer to your friendly iPhone to when is sunset and sunrise. In the beautiful city of Savannah, GA, sunset is at 19:39 and sunrise at 07:22. That means that you can get your night currency between 20:39 and 06:22 local time.

I would also like to remind that the logging of night landing is only important for the purposes of currency,. Remember, you don't need to log any of your flights, unless you need the evidence to show currency, etc!

Warning about Logbook Accuracy

Please be careful on logging all these things correctly. I'm very picky on logbook accuracy, especially since integrity is really important to me. That being said, I've encountered pilots who would

1. log a night landing with no night time (that's not possible, right?)

2. log a night landing with a less than one hour of night time (that being less than the total flight time, indicating there was a day-to-night tarnsition)

3. log the night landings right after sunset

Tizi's two cents. It's not worth cheating on these things. In aviation, cheating will only set you on the path to normalize deviance. And we don't want that. My personal rule is to log a night landing only if I've logged at least 1 hour of night time (assuming a flight with day-to-night transition). With ADSB we can easily see when a pilot flew, adn that time can be easily determined and used by a court of law (or worse, the NTSB) to analyze events. Please be careful.