Night Currency Requirements Pilots Forget to Check

What the FAR Actually Says About Night Currency

Night currency has gotten complicated with all the misinformation flying around — and honestly, I get it. The regulation lives in FAR 61.57(b), which is short enough to skim in thirty seconds but precise enough to wreck your weekend plans if you’re not reading carefully.

But what is night currency, exactly? In essence, it’s a 90-day requirement to carry passengers after dark. But it’s much more than that. To carry passengers at night, you need three takeoffs and three full-stop landings within the past 90 days. Those landings must fall between one hour after sunset and one hour before sunrise. The airport has to be one where you can legally land — a public-use field or one where you’ve got explicit permission.

Three and three. Ninety days. Night hours only.

The tricky part isn’t the rule. It’s what counts. A full-stop landing means wheels down, taxi off the runway, engine still running. A touch-and-go means landing and immediately reapplying power — no stop, no taxi-back. A go-around doesn’t count as a landing at all. Your logbook entry is your legal record, and if the FAA ever reads it after an incident, what you wrote is what happened.

Most pilots know the 90-day window. They know they need three landings. Where things fall apart is deciding whether the landings they actually logged qualify.

Touch-and-Goes Don’t Count and That Surprises Pilots

I made this exact mistake about six years ago. Scheduled a night training flight with my CFI, spent roughly 55 minutes doing touch-and-goes at a quiet little airport outside Portland, logged it as currency work. Two weeks later, someone asked me to pick up a passenger for an evening flight. Halfway through the preflight — maybe ten minutes in — I realized I had never once come to a full stop that night.

Touch-and-goes don’t count toward night currency. Period.

The FAA drew this line deliberately. A full-stop landing makes you assess the runway, manage the whole approach, stabilize the descent, touch down, and actually stop the aircraft. You taxi back. You reset mentally. You launch again into variable wind conditions. A touch-and-go compresses all of that — you land, immediately push the throttle, and skip the part where you actually evaluate what just happened.

The agency wanted pilots carrying passengers at night to prove they could handle the complete cycle. Not just the landing. The whole thing.

This trips pilots up constantly because training flights lean on touch-and-goes for efficiency. Book an hour, knock out seven or eight of them, feel productive, log it. But if your logbook doesn’t show full-stop landings at night, you’re not current for passenger operations once that 90-day window slams shut. Don’t make my mistake.

The fix isn’t complicated. Land. Taxi back. Take off again. Do that three times after dark at a qualifying airport and you’re legal. Solo counts. Dual counts. A check ride counts. Pretending touch-and-goes satisfy the requirement does not count.

Check your logbook right now — at least if you haven’t looked at it recently. Find the night entries. If they say “touch-and-go,” circle them in red. Those don’t count.

How Instrument Pilots Get This Wrong

Instrument-rated pilots walk around with a comfortable assumption: that instrument currency covers night flying. It doesn’t. Not even slightly.

Instrument currency under FAR 61.57(c) requires six approaches, holding procedures, and intercepting and tracking within the past six calendar months. Fly them in actual IMC, under the hood, or in an approved sim. Two in the afternoon, two in the morning — time of day is completely irrelevant to the requirement.

Night currency is entirely separate. It’s about landing operations after dark. That’s what makes it confusing to instrument pilots — there’s no obvious overlap, and nothing in the instrument currency rules hints at the distinction.

I’ve talked to instrument-rated pilots who flew a full winter’s worth of approaches in actual IMC, stayed razor-sharp on holds and intercepts, and genuinely believed their night currency was fine because they were “actively flying.” Then they sat down and counted their night landings. Zero qualifying full-stops in three months. Instrument current and night illegal — simultaneously, in the same logbook.

A Garmin 430 and a fresh instrument rating don’t change the math. Shoot perfect ILS approaches in actual icing conditions all winter — you’re still illegal to carry a passenger from KPDX to KSLE after dark if you haven’t landed three times at night in the past 90 days.

The solution is tracking them as two completely independent requirements. Use whatever system works — paper logbook, LogTen Pro, ForeFlight’s currency tracker. I’m apparently a paper-and-spreadsheet person and that combination works for me while app-only systems never quite stuck. Doesn’t matter what you use. What matters is that you’re not assuming one currency covers the other.

How to Check Your Logbook in 60 Seconds

Here’s a self-audit. Probably should have opened with this section, honestly.

Open your logbook and find the date column. Figure out what date fell 90 days ago — roughly three months back, or just pull up a calendar and count. Write that date on a sticky note.

Scan forward from that date to today. Look for entries marked “night” in your conditions column, or cross-check your landing times against actual sunset data for that location. The FAA’s definition is one hour after sunset to one hour before sunrise. If you’re not sure whether a flight qualified, look up the sunset time for that city and date — it takes 45 seconds on Google.

Count the full-stop landings only. Touch-and-goes don’t count. Go-arounds don’t count. Precautionary landings almost certainly don’t count.

Three or more full-stops? You’re current. Fewer than three? You’re not.

Takes about a minute if your logbook is clean, five minutes if it looks like mine did in 2018. Either way — write down the actual numbers. Don’t estimate. Most pilots who say they’re “pretty sure” they’re current are actually just hoping they are.

What to Do If You’ve Let Night Currency Lapse

Lapsed night currency isn’t a violation by itself — as long as you’re not carrying passengers. Flying solo at night is legal indefinitely. The currency requirement only gates you from passenger operations. So there’s no need to panic, just a need to fix it.

So, without further ado, let’s dive into your options:

• Schedule a night dual flight with a CFI. One hour, three full-stop landings, logged correctly. You’re current again. Expect to spend somewhere between $150 and $250 depending on your rental rate and location — less if you own the airplane.
• Fly solo if you have access to an aircraft. Three full-stops at night on your own, logged properly, restarts the 90-day clock. No instructor cost, just fuel and any landing fees — maybe $40 to $60 total at a typical GA field.
• Roll it into a flight review. If your BFR is coming due anyway, ask your CFI to include some night ops with full-stop landings. One flight, two requirements handled.

None of these are burdensome. A single one-hour lesson buys you three months of passenger-carrying privileges. Build the habit — calendar a dedicated night flight every 60 days if you’re regularly flying passengers after dark. Don’t wait until you’re scrambling at 6 PM on a Friday to figure out whether you’re legal.

Track the numbers actively. Know your expiration date the same way you know your medical’s expiration date. Check it quarterly — not when someone calls asking if you can fly them somewhere tonight.

Your certificate depends on getting these details right.