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Night Flying Requirements

Asked by: 2902 views FAA Regulations, General Aviation

In order to carry passengers at night, pilots are required to have performed a number of night landings in the previous 90 days. Those landings are to be made to a "full stop." Why the "full stop" stipulation? Can't seem to find this discussed. In my private pilot training, my CFI did not want to make "full stop" landings for safety reasons. Paul Livermore (KLVK), CA

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3 Answers



  1. John D Collins on Oct 19, 2015

    The reason you must make the landing to a full stop is because that is what the regulation calls for. The rational is not given, but I expect it is due to the fact that a landing is not complete until you have arrived at a full stop. In my opinion, a touch and go is more of the \”go\” than a landing. When I operated a flight school, I did not permit them in our aircraft.

    I don\’t agree with a CFI that argues that full stop landings are not safe. I can and do make an argument that touch and go operations are not as safe because they introduce other hazards such as unintentional gear up, flap or trim errors, etc. In my opinion, they are counterproductive to good learning because the student is more focused on the takeoff than absorbing the lesson of the previous landing.

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  2. Kris Kortokrax on Oct 19, 2015

    I would be interested to know what safety concern your instructor had with a full stop landing.

    There are more safety concerns involved with a touch and go, such as reconfiguring the airplane while still rolling. The diversion of attention from watching where the airplane is going to reaching for flaps and carb heat and retrimming the airplane are better handled after taxiing off the runway and stopping.

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  3. Mark Kolber on Oct 24, 2015

    I would be interested to know what safety concern your instructor had with a full stop landing.

    If I might hazard (pun intended) a guess, the instructor was talking about full stops in a “stop and go” and the concern was the availability of remaining runway for a takeoff from a dead stop.

    Paul, in case I am correct, “full stop” doesn’t mean come to a full stop on the runway. A “full stop” is exactly what you do at the end of a flight when you shut the aircraft down and go home. A stop and go is just an option for a full stop landing, as is getting off at a taxiway and and taxiing back for another takeoff.

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