Night flying gets its own column in the logbook, but the moment a flight counts as night is not the moment the sun sets. It depends on a precise definition tied to civil twilight, and under the FAA it depends on which rule you are applying. This builds on our guide to keeping a digital logbook.
This is general educational information, not operational, legal, or regulatory advice. Rules differ by authority and change over time. Always verify against current official sources and follow your operator's approved procedures.
Night is not sunset
The intuitive idea of night, the sun going down, is not the regulatory one. Both the FAA and EASA tie night to civil twilight, the period after sunset when the sky is still lit but fading. Civil twilight ends, and night begins, when the geometric centre of the sun reaches 6 degrees below the horizon. So there is a gap of roughly half an hour, longer at high latitudes, between sunset and the start of logging night, and the same in reverse at dawn. The almanac data that fixes these times is published for every date and latitude.
The FAA definition for logging
For logging flight time, the FAA uses the definition in 14 CFR 1.1: night is the time between the end of evening civil twilight and the beginning of morning civil twilight, as published in the Air Almanac and converted to local time. When you log night flight time under 14 CFR 61.51, this is the night you mean.
The FAA's second night
Here is the trap that catches people. The FAA uses a different definition of night for passenger-carrying currency. Under 14 CFR 61.57, the night take-offs and landings that keep you current to carry passengers at night must be made in the period from 1 hour after sunset to 1 hour before sunrise, which is not the same as the civil-twilight window used for logging.
So a single flight can produce one figure of night flight time for your logbook (civil-twilight definition) and a different judgement of whether a landing counts for night currency (the one-hour window). They overlap but are not identical, and conflating them is a common error. (For more on currency, see our guide to recency and currency.)
The EASA definition
Under EASA, night is defined in the operating rules, carried into the flight crew licensing framework, as the period between the end of evening civil twilight and the beginning of morning civil twilight, or such other period between sunset and sunrise as the appropriate authority may prescribe. The EASA aircrew rules (Part-FCL) use this for night flying experience and ratings. Because the EASA and FAA logging definitions both rest on civil twilight, they line up more closely with each other than the FAA's two internal definitions do, but you should still log to the system the flight is for.
A worked example
You fly from 1830 to 2030 local in the evening. Sunset is at 1900, and evening civil twilight ends at 1930.
- From 1830 to 1930 is daylight and twilight, not night for logging.
- From 1930 to 2030 is night, so you log 1.0 hour of night flight time under the civil-twilight definition.
Now suppose you made a landing at 2025. For FAA logging it is in the night. For FAA night passenger currency, the relevant period is from one hour after sunset, that is from 2000, so the 2025 landing also counts towards currency. Move that landing to 1945 and it is night for logging but not inside the one-hour-after-sunset window, so it would not count for night passenger currency. Same flight, two answers, because two definitions.
Night at high latitudes and through the year
Because night is defined by the sun reaching a set angle below the horizon, how much night there is, and whether there is any at all, changes dramatically with latitude and season. This is not a curiosity; it directly affects how much night you can log and whether you can stay night-current.
At high latitudes in summer, the sun may never sink the required 6 degrees below the horizon, so evening civil twilight never ends and there is no night at all by the logging definition. In the far north in June, you cannot log night flight time because the regulatory night does not occur, no matter how late you fly. In winter the reverse is true: the nights are long, civil twilight is brief, and a mid-afternoon flight can be entirely in night.
Even at moderate latitudes the length of twilight changes through the year. Twilight is shortest near the equator and lengthens towards the poles and towards midsummer, so the gap between sunset and the start of logging night is not a fixed half hour; it varies with where and when you fly. A flight that produces an hour of loggable night in December might produce far less in June at the same place and clock time.
The practical consequence is that you cannot estimate the night portion of a flight by a rule of thumb tied to sunset. You have to use the computed civil-twilight times for the specific date and location, published in sources such as the US Naval Observatory astronomical data and national almanac services, the same data the FAA points to through the Air Almanac in 14 CFR 1.1. It also means a pilot who relies on regular night flying for currency has to plan around the season: keeping night-current is easy in winter and can be genuinely hard in a high-latitude summer, when the qualifying period barely exists. Planning your night flying around the calendar, banking the landings you need while the dark hours are plentiful, is the sensible response to that seasonal swing.
A worked dawn flight
A morning flight shows how the boundary works at the start of the day, where it is just as easy to get wrong as in the evening. You take off at 0600 local and land at 0800. Morning civil twilight begins at 0645, and sunrise is at 0715.
- From 0600 to 0645 the sun is still more than 6 degrees below the horizon, so it is night for logging.
- From 0645 onwards, morning civil twilight has begun, so it is no longer night.
You therefore log 0.75 hours of night flight time for the first part of the flight, ending at 0645, not at sunrise at 0715. Reading night as ending at sunrise would lose you 30 minutes of legitimate night time.
The currency window is again different. For FAA night passenger currency under 14 CFR 61.57, the relevant period ends one hour before sunrise, which here is 0615. So a landing at 0610 would count towards night currency, while a landing at 0640, although still in logging-night, would fall after the currency window and would not. As in the evening, the same flight produces one answer for logging night and another for night currency, because two different definitions are in play, and the only reliable way to apply either is from the computed twilight and sunrise times for the date and place. It is worth holding the two boundaries together as a pair: logging night runs between the civil-twilight limits, while the FAA night passenger-currency window sits inside them, from an hour after sunset to an hour before sunrise. Picture them as two windows, the currency one always the narrower, and you will stop conflating the figure you write in the night column with the one that keeps you legal to carry passengers after dark.
Common pitfalls
- Starting night at sunset. Logging night starts at the end of evening civil twilight, about half an hour later.
- Using one FAA night for both purposes. Logging uses civil twilight; passenger currency uses the one-hour window.
- Ignoring latitude and date. Twilight length changes with both, so the night portion of a flight varies through the year.
- Carrying definitions across authorities. Log to the system the flight and the licence belong to.
- Estimating instead of computing. The boundary times are published; work the night portion from them, not by eye.
In Pilot EFB
Pilot EFB can work out the night portion of a flight for you, using the departure and destination airports, the date, and your off and on block times together with sunrise and sunset, and suggest a night figure for you to review before you save the entry. It is a convenient working aid: it produces a suggestion for you to check, not an authority-approved figure, and you should confirm it against the definition that applies to your logbook and reconcile it with any record your operator or training organisation treats as official. Entries you have saved stay available offline. Pilot EFB is offline-first and is not a certified or authority-approved electronic logbook.