AOPA Pilot Magazine - June 2019 - 61

working to spot the airport and
talking with the controller about
the need for lighting, overflew
Batesville at about 4,000 feet
msl (3,000 feet agl). Still searching for the runway, and pleading
for lighting, he extended 2 miles
north of the field, then began a
right 270-degree turn to a west
heading. The airplane struck terrain about 1.5 miles north of the
Batesville Runway 18 approach
threshold; all on board perished.
The NTSB has not concluded its final analysis;
however, the additional risks of
night flying clearly played a role
in this tragedy. The approximate
gliding distance of a Cessna 210
at 6,000 feet agl is 9 miles. In the
daytime, only 4 miles from the
field, the pilots likely would have
picked up Batesville and set up a
glide path with plenty of altitude
and distance to make the field.
Almost certainly they would
have been able to assess the
5,900-foot runway as suitable
for emergency operations, and
been able to execute a successful
partial-power/engine-out pattern and landing. Or, this could
have been one of the vast majority of off-airport landings that do
not result in a fatality.
But on a dark night, gliding
over a dark countryside, with just
a sliver of a moon obscured by an
overcast, two aging pilots on the
tail end of a long day struggled
to find the runway and overflew
other locations suitable for an offairport landing. Satellite imagery
shows an expressway a mile south
of the closed airport and numerous open fields in the vicinity of
Batesville, which appear to be
options for an emergency landing.
We'll never know if fatigue
from the long day contributed
to impaired reaction times,
reduced cognitive ability, and
diminished night vision, but
it's reasonable to consider they
could have been a factor. It's
unclear if the pilots noted during preflight planning that the

Batesville airport was closed,
and whether or not that was a
factor in their preflight planning and routing. From radio
transmissions released by the
NTSB, the pilot seemed fixated on activating lighting on
a closed runway as opposed
to accepting the situation and
focusing on an alternate plan:
either finding an alternate location, or finding and landing at
Batesville without lights.
The AOPA Air Safety
Institute researched airfield
closings and learned that on any
given day, approximately 1 percent of airports across the United
States are closed, for an average duration of 2.5 days. A good
preflight planning technique
is to annotate closed airfields,
especially when flying at night;
determine whether they would
still be suitable for an emergency
landing; and consider alternate
routes if practical.
T h e p i l o t 's r e p e a t e d
transmissions with elevating
anxiety indicate no one on
board was able to penetrate the
darkness and find the airfield,
even as they overflew it at about
3,000 feet agl. Visual acuity in the
darkness of the remote Indiana
countryside would have required
exceptionally good night vision.
We won't know whether they had
reduced internal cockpit lighting
to the minimum necessary and
turned off flashlights to optimize
night vision and reduce cockpit
glare. We don't know the avionics
they had on board or whether
they had an electronic flight bag
with synthetic vision, but that
certainly would have helped in
their search.
We'll never fully understand everything the pilots
were dealing with in the
cockpit, the extent of their
challenges, or the entirety of all
they considered-or didn't consider-in their decision making.
The final NTSB report is not
likely to provide further insight

on these areas. Regardless of its
findings, we can learn from this
scenario, apply lessons that
may be helpful in updating our
approach to night flying, and
ultimately prevent a mishap in
the future.
AOPA
EMAIL richard.mcspadden@

aopa.org

TIPS FOR NIGHT FLYING
* Slow down. Everything takes a little longer at night.
Allow extra time to find things in the cockpit and
accomplish other tasks-and give your eyes a chance
to adjust to the dark.
* Preflight your lighting. Understand which instruments will be lit and use as little light as possible in the
cockpit to preserve your night vision.
* Preflight yourself. Could fatigue affect your ability to
respond to an unusual situation in flight?
* Ease into night. By taking off in the daytime or at
sunset you can adjust to nighttime slowly, adjusting
your lights as you go.
* Bring spares. Carry a flashlight and extra batteries,
just in case.
* Consider your route. Consider the availability and
visibility of emergency landing sites along your route,
including the status of and lighting at en route airports.
You may also choose to avoid terrain at night that you
would fly over during the day. Flying higher than usual
may give you more time to react to a power loss or
other in-flight emergency, but be conscious of how altitude degrades night vision.
* Brush up on instrument flying. Over remote areas
on a moonless night, outside visual references may
seem to disappear. Use the flight instruments to maintain orientation and don't be afraid to use tools such as
an electronic glideslope or visual approach indicator on
final approach.

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AOPA Pilot Magazine - June 2019

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