Night rating costs

[Warrior100]

Hi folks,

I recently had a flying club based in the north of england say that for a night rating, since their airfield was not open at night (no lights) they could do it from a nearby, lit airfield but they would charge for the costs of relocating the aircraft to and from there.

Would you agree or disagree with this?

Cheers!

[mcgoo]

Agree, their a business, not a charity.

[IRISHPILOT]

Well, who is supposed to pay for it in your opinion? If it is a club, it is probably non-profit. - Do you really expect the other members to foot the bill for you to get the night qualification?!

Why don't you position it yourself at sunset, so there is no extra cost for that leg (or at least you can fly it yourself).

[BackPacker]

Sounds normal to me. You can make it a little easier to fly the plane over there yourself, or even depart just before sunset from your home field, and letting it become legally night during the flight. The problem with this sort of thing is getting the plane back to the home field the day after: are you going to bring it back or does the school need to do that?

Consider yourself lucky. In the Netherlands NVFR is not allowed at all. The only way to get the NR here is on an IFR flight with a fully qualified IFR instructor on board, and the flight (plus the landings) logged as SPIC. This is then accepted by the Dutch authorities as being equal to the solo landing and take-off requirement as mentioned in JAR-FCL. So I did an IFR night flight to the nearest airfield where we could do the stop-and-goes, and only found out that the UK CAA (who gave me my license) does not accept this Dutch way of working. Their suggestion is actually to transfer my UK JAR-FCL license onto the Dutch authorities and try again.

So that money is gone, the flight has led to nowhere, and I now need to find out if a Dutch JAR-FCL instructor is allowed to sign out a student for solo night in Belgium, and then do the whole flight again.:{

When I eventually get the NR, I will have done it with plenty hours though.

[Merritt]

I did my NR at Thruxton. They open until 8pm over winter and have full lit runway facilities etc but do charge an increased hourly rate (approx £10 ph more) to hire the aircraft. I am told this is mainly to cover the costs of paying the overtime for the fire crew to keep the field licensed!!

Well worth it though - I night flying provides for some fantastic views... You can actually see bristol and the bristol channel from FL100 over Thruxton :ok:

Steve

[Toadpool]

In the Netherlands NVFR is not allowed at all.

Nor is it allowed in the UK, at least for civilian aircraft/pilots.

As usual the military have their own rules.

[BackPacker]

Nor is it allowed in the UK, at least for civilian aircraft/pilots.

True, but in the UK you can fly IFR without an IR under certain circumstances. Not so here.