Hi All,

Quick Question to which nobody seems to be able to answer for me.

I hold a Current and Recent MECIR. Now say I want to do a private flight at night carrying 1 pax but have not done 3 Night T/O and Landings in the past 90 days but have done more than one Night take-off and Landing in the past 6 months.

Clearly I need to go up and do some circuits sometime to become recent for pax. This would not be a problem under the NVFR because I could just go out and to them solo. BUT I do not hold a NVFR (nor do i meet the Night VFR minimum req's having not done a 3hr Nav) thus I would need to do the solo 3 take-off's and landings under the IFR.

Now comes the tricky question. How do you do Night Circuits under the IFR? Does such a thing exist?

Do I need to lodge an IFR flight plan for airwork over my aerodrome? It seems a bit silly having to lodge an IFR flight plan which may look like (assuming departure aerodrome yppf)

DCT YPPF
DCT
(so effectively YPPF to YPPF to YPPF.....)

Seems odd that I can go shooting off into the night and do a visual circling approach but there doesn't seem to be a way to practice circuits at my base aerodrome...

Any thoughts?

The night flying for the CIR can all be done in the circuit area. If that’s the case, you can only fly in command at night on an IFR flight (or doing night circuit practice).

If you have a CIR and a NVFR rating (or have completed the NVFR training requirements) and have the appropriate night recency, you can fly private NVFR on the strength of your CIR.

The extra NVFR experience (and recency) is required if they want to do NVFR charter.

They sure know how to complicate things though