Glad to see this Thread is back up and running. So I'll have to do my bit to keep it live. People have been mentioning airport lights...
Many years ago I flew a friend of mine (a PPL) and our girl-friends in a Twin Comanche from Pretoria to Sun City to go to a show (Sha-na-na, the band that played in 'Grease'). Arrival, parking, shuttle to the hotel, casino, show and drinks (mine being 'soft' due to flying back') and the shuttle back to the airport all went well. Then we arrived at the airport. In total darkness. Well, not quite. A faint glimmer inside the 'terminal building'. Inside was the 'duty manager' sitting with one lone candle on the desk in front of him. A power cut. No lights at all. In torchlight my friend and I paced out over the dark apron to discuss the problem. The Twin Com has very good landing lights. So we started up, taxied out and back-tracked with the full landing lights on. It is very, very dark all around Sun City until you are pointing towards the bright lights of the distant Pretoria/Johannesburg cities. My friend had been briefed to watch two things: the A/H and shout if it showed any bank until I stated that I was going to be turning and then shout if it went over 15deg also the VSI and to shout at any time it was not pointing up! We took off with the landing lights lighting up the centre-line markings being watched very, very closely and then instant darkness on 'rotate', no lingering glimmer of runway lights disappearing below. Once settled in the climb on our homeward track we both relaxed a little. 'Darkest Africa'!!