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This is an interesting question I've discussed with my friends

As the title says. In this case your transponder doesn't work. Despite the tower can use light to guide you. But:

  1. It's totally dark and you're invisible
  2. The tower may be at off time

What can we do?

demonguy
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    It happened on February 5, 2017 near Paris Airfield, Texas; here's one account of the incident. ATC managed to find the pilot's cell phone number and text him, after which they managed to manually turn the lights on at another airport and direct him there. – Tanner Swett Aug 21 '23 at 04:10
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    Do not rely on strange modern gimmicks such as electricity; always have a pair of naval flags with you to signal to the tower. Of course, the tower should have the same to reply, as well as candles and matches to light your landing strip. –  Aug 21 '23 at 20:00
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    @user70523 -- maybe you are on to something-- why do we no longer carry parachute flares to light the ground below for emergency night landings, like airmail pilots used to to in the 1920's when flying the night mail in their DH4's? (This is well described in Lindbergh's book "The Spirit of St Louis" -- along with accounts of bailing out when the flare showed no landable terrain below... ) – quiet flyer Aug 21 '23 at 22:45

2 Answers2

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Use your handheld radio, or go to another airport that's lighted, or call or text someone on your cell phone, or keep flying till (full) moonrise or dawn, or fly to the handy nearby desert dry lakebed where space is unlimited and the white surface will visible to dark-adapted eyes even by starlight. In the latter case, to compensate for lack of depth perception, you may need to use the procedure used by floatplanes landing on glassy water-- maintain a constant, low descent rate till the wheels touch.

Or do a low-altitude buzz job on a nearby neighborhood, all-night gas station, etc-- maybe you'll get someone's attention. (But try buzzing the airport first-- if anyone's there, they should soon realize what is going on.)

Apparently flying in triangles used to be a distress signal to ATC, but has now been abandoned (link to "Quora" answer).

quiet flyer
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This actually happened to me once, our destination was an uncontrolled airport with pilot-controlled lighting.

Luckily everything didn't die at once. The first clue was the GPS screen going blank. After some investigation, I found that the generator had failed and the battery was going dead. I quickly turned off everything electrical, including all the lights inside and outside, and used a flashlight to see the instruments.

Once we were close to the airport, I turned on one nav/com radio (not the GPS/nav/com) and clicked on the airport lights. I left all the lights off and made radio calls including our lack of lights with the remainder of the battery power. It worked out fine, nobody else was around.

Khantahr
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