Finally some light is shed on the problem.
Australian NVFR is totally flawed and has been for years.
All that is required is to look at what others are doing or have done in the past on the planet.
Nah nah yeah nah - lets reinvent the wheel mate.
As it stood if you had "flight instruments" and radio nav to take you where you wanted to go, you were good.
Nowhere did it state that you required adequate celestial or terrestrial lighting to establish your orientation.
So therefore because it sez Civil Aviation SAFETY Authority the assumption was it was safe.
After just 5 hours of training you could launch in an unstable aircraft, single pilot, IMC. It must be IMC because you cant see enough to tell if it's not by default.
I always asked the question - If its VFR why do you need "flight instruments"?
The knee jerk reaction proposed is kind of strange as well.
Two pilots? Does the aircraft need to be configured 2 pilot. i.e. duplicated flight instruments and dual controls and certified as such?
Autopilot? IFR, SPIFR, VFR, certified? Or just any old autopilot?
Why not just say IFR capable?
NGT VFR should be like anywhere else. Basic flight instruments and a wet compass. As it says on most type certified aircraft in the world on the placard in the cockpit except Australia if it does not have flight instruments. The onus is on the pilot to operate at night in visual conditions by looking out the window, not some myth that because it has "flight instruments" everything is good.
THere are numerous times when there is adequate lighting to fly at night without flight instruments and of course the opposite applies.
The Bell 206 night flight kit used to have a placard stating that with the kit flight by sole reference to instruments was prohibited but apparently not in Australia. Who knew?
If you look at it from another angle if this aircraft did not have "flight instruments" and the supposedly safe legal framework to allow the segment of flight to be conducted it possibly wouldn't have happened. The other indiscretions well.................
Flight by reference to "flight instruments" is not VFR. Flight at night in visual conditions to orientate yourself can be conducted quite adequately without "flight instruments". You just don't fly in the black bits the same as you don't fly into cloud.
If anyone is to lay blame 50% should be on CASA's shoulders and the stats are there to prove it. They are listed in the report.
The myth persists that if it is legal it must be safe. CASA once again are suffering from their own delusion.