Originally Posted by
Avman
Interesting point too, however, I would have thought that if it was indeed so, they would have made their planned intention known to ATC much sooner. I tend to think that it was a last minute decision which left little time to execute a tricky low altitude manoeuvre (in reduced visibility) effectively.
The problem with letting ATC know earlier is that he would have had to request a circle to land and that is not authorized at night. Therefore he waited until he was visual, cancelled IFR, and was then legally able to request a VFR circuit. As he was based at the field, my gut feeling is that he had done this many times in the past; however, on that night his luck ran out.