Logging Day and Night Flight Time Correctly: Definitions, Boundaries and Common Mistakes

A summer evening at the field: airborne at 20:15, two circuits, then a short cross-country leg, back on the ground at 22:30. The sun disappeared below the horizon a long time ago, and the runway lights were already on during the last approach. Which leaves the question that a surprising number of pilots answer confidently and incorrectly: how many minutes of night time belong in the logbook?

It all comes down to a single definition. Get it right and your entries hold up. Reach for sunset instead, and you build a small error into every dusk flight — one that compounds season after season, and shows up exactly when it hurts: when you count night hours for a night rating, or check whether your night recency is still valid.

When does night actually begin?

The EASA definition

The governing definition sits in FCL.010 of Regulation (EU) No 1178/2011 (Part-FCL) and is echoed by Implementing Regulation (EU) No 923/2012 (SERA). In substance: night is the period between the end of evening civil twilight and the beginning of morning civil twilight.

The operative term is civil twilight. It ends, or begins, when the geometric centre of the sun sits 6 degrees below the horizon. Sunset, by contrast, is the moment the sun reaches 0 degrees. In Central Europe those two moments are between half an hour and three quarters of an hour apart — and that gap is where most logbook errors are born.

Why the old rule of thumb no longer applies

Plenty of pilots were taught something different during training: night runs from sunset plus 30 minutes to sunrise minus 30 minutes. That was the definition in the former German air traffic regulation (LuftVO § 17). It was superseded in Germany on 6 November 2015 and must no longer be used to record flight time.

The rule of thumb survives because it is convenient. Sunset times appear in every flight planning app, and adding 30 minutes is mental arithmetic. The only problem is that the answer no longer matches the definition in force.

How long does twilight really last?

Civil twilight is not a fixed quantity. Its duration depends on latitude and time of year. For Central Europe, the rough figures are:

Around the spring and autumn equinox: roughly 32 minutes after sunset.
Around the summer and winter solstice: 40 to 47 minutes after sunset.

In midsummer, then, a pilot without a night rating may legitimately still be flying up to 47 minutes after sunset before night begins. Turn that around and the consequence is clear: anyone logging night time from sunset plus 30 minutes credits themselves with up to 17 extra minutes on a June evening flight.

A worked example: the June evening flight

Running the numbers makes the gap tangible. Assume that on a day in June, sunset at the departure aerodrome is 21:20 local time, and evening civil twilight ends 47 minutes later.

Sunset: 21:20 local time.
End of evening civil twilight, and therefore the start of night: 22:07 local time.
Landing: 22:30 local time.
Night time to be logged: 23 minutes.

Under the superseded rule of thumb, night would have started at 21:50 and the entry would read 40 minutes. Seventeen minutes sounds trivial. Across twenty evening flights in a season it is more than five hours — enough to make the difference between genuinely holding the five night hours required for a night rating and only appearing to.

One point about the entry itself: logbook times are recorded in UTC. The example above works in local time because twilight tables are usually published that way. Converting before the entry goes into the logbook is essential, and forgetting to do so is a classic source of error on flights that cross a time zone boundary.

What FCL.050 requires you to record

The obligation to keep a logbook comes from FCL.050. How it is kept is set out in AMC1 FCL.050, most recently updated by ED Decision 2025/002/R, which describes a twelve-column format. For day and night time, these points matter most:

Night time is recorded separately, under Operational Condition Time (column 9).
Landings are counted separately for day and night, not merely as a combined total.
All times are recorded in UTC.
Electronic logbooks are explicitly acceptable; ED Decision 2020/005/R provided the basis for this.
Entries are to be made as soon as practicable after a flight.

That produces a consistency rule which is regularly broken in practice: if you log a night landing, you must also show night flight time. A night landing with no corresponding night time contradicts itself and stands out in any careful review of a logbook.

Finding the transition on a cross-country flight

In the circuit it is straightforward: one location, one twilight time. On a cross-country flight it gets harder, because the reference point that counts is the actual position of the aircraft at the moment of twilight — not the home field, and not the destination.

A flight from Munich to Hamburg illustrates the point. Several degrees of latitude and longitude separate the two ends of the route, and twilight times differ noticeably as a result. Applying the departure aerodrome’s twilight time to the whole flight introduces a systematic error.

Without a recorded GPS track, the transition point cannot be pinned down to the second. A careful estimate based on the planned route will normally land within a few minutes, which is defensible and far better than a blanket sunset calculation. Useful references include the official twilight tables published by the German weather service (DWD) for Germany and, for VFR flights in Switzerland, Bern as the reference coordinate. Purpose-built tools such as NightLog Pro sample the sun’s position minute by minute along the great circle route.

Why the precision matters: night rating and recency

The night rating under FCL.810

A night rating is obtained through a course at an ATO. The requirements are at least five hours of night flight time, of which at least three hours are dual instruction, at least one hour of night navigation flying, at least one dual cross-country flight of at least 50 kilometres, plus five solo take-offs and five solo full-stop landings. There is no skill test, and the rating has no expiry date — it never needs renewing.

Recency under FCL.060

No expiry date does not mean unrestricted use. To carry passengers at night, you need at least one take-off, approach and landing at night within the preceding 90 days. Holders of an instrument rating are exempt from this specific night recency requirement.

The comparison with the United States is instructive. The FAA requires three take-offs and full-stop landings and defines the relevant window as one hour after sunset to one hour before sunrise. If you use flight time across both systems, keeping the two definitions apart is not optional.

PPL(A) and LAPL(A)

A night rating is available to both PPL(A) and LAPL(A) holders, and both the course content and the recency requirements are identical. One difference remains: LAPL holders must complete basic instrument flight training before starting the night rating course, even if they have no intention of going on to a PPL.

Common mistakes when logging night time

Using sunset instead of civil twilight as the start of night: night time is overstated, by up to 47 minutes per flight in summer.
Logging no night time at all after a dusk flight: night time is understated, and a recency gap can open up unnoticed.
A night landing without night time, or the reverse: an internal contradiction that does not satisfy AMC1 FCL.050.
Local time instead of UTC: it surfaces as soon as a flight crosses a time zone, and it makes totals unusable.
Applying the home field’s twilight time to cross-country flights: a systematic error that grows with route length.
Recording landings as a single total: without a day and night split, the AMC1 FCL.050 requirement is not met.

Key points

Night begins at the end of evening civil twilight, not at sunset. In Central Europe the difference is roughly 32 to 47 minutes.
The old sunset plus 30 minutes rule came from the German LuftVO and has not applied in Germany since 6 November 2015.
FCL.050 requires night time in its own column, day and night landings counted separately, and all times in UTC.
On cross-country flights, what counts is the position of the aircraft, not the departure aerodrome.
Precision pays off: the five night hours for a night rating and the 90-day recency for carrying passengers at night both rest on accurate entries.

Sources

This article is provided for general information and reflects the sources consulted at the time of publication. It does not constitute legal advice or an authoritative statement by an aviation authority. The applicable laws, regulations, and the current guidance and decisions of the competent aviation authorities always take precedence.