Let’s not belittle the thread by extolling the virtues of flying in the old days - we’ve already agreed that regular tooling about at night is not an issue if you do it often enough.
The fading of flying skills - If present in the first place - is a known issue but rarely addressed due to the “it will only happen to someone else” syndrome.
I have a hunch (rumour network) that there is more to this incident than meets the eye - I suspect that the ‘medevac’ element might have affected the go/no-go decision-making matrix......