Interesting points all, especially from WestHawk and OzExpat and RBF(does the learning ever stop?!).
I have night time trip to Manzanillo, Mexico later this month. Have flown the visual approach daytime there several times, but til now, not at night. In light of the comments above, I've been looking at the circling approach for RWY 28, the runway with the PAPI.
My question is how would I determine if Pans Ops or TERPs were the design criteria (We use Jepps)?
Then I'll have to figure out what you two are talking about
!
PostScript: just pulled out our Intl Ops guide. It has a good primer on this stuff. Thanks for bringing the topic up...