"There I was..." An Aviation Podcast
Apr 21, 2026 · 34 min · 24 segments
Kansas City-based flight instructor Lennon Carlson recounts a night engine-out scare in a borrowed Cessna Cardinal RG while flying home after a Fourth of July weekend.
David O'LearyHost
We're gonna hear about an engine failure at night in a single engine, uh, aircraft.
It, it's always the, uh, the question for single engine pilots like me is how much night flying do you actually do? And I'll tell you personally, I'll, I'll come back at night, maybe at dusk, maybe a little after, but I seldom get up into the plane in the dark of night to go up.
And, a- I know many pilots who won't go single engine at night, and some have sort of the idea that the engine is more likely to fail at night than it is during the day.
So I'm curious since we're gonna talk about an engine failure at night, do you have personal minimums on going up at night in a single engine aircraft?
I'm not gonna get into any clouds, anything like that, just because we do have so many more things working against us, so much easier to get disoriented and, and really lose that situational awareness, which, at least early on, instrument, uh, even night flying is so hard to gain that, uh, situational awareness and keep it throughout the flying.
So I look at it as an instructor, especially primary instructor, as a bit of a necessary evil.
We're gonna hear about an engine failure at night in a single engine, uh, aircraft.
It, it's always the, uh, the question for single engine pilots like me is how much night flying do you actually do? And I'll tell you personally, I'll, I'll come back at night, maybe at dusk, maybe a little after, but I seldom get up into the plane in the dark of night to go up.
And, a- I know many pilots who won't go single engine at night, and some have sort of the idea that the engine is more likely to fail at night than it is during the day.
So I'm curious since we're gonna talk about an engine failure at night, do you have personal minimums on going up at night in a single engine aircraft?
I'm not gonna get into any clouds, anything like that, just because we do have so many more things working against us, so much easier to get disoriented and, and really lose that situational awareness, which, at least early on, instrument, uh, even night flying is so hard to gain that, uh, situational awareness and keep it throughout the flying.
So I look at it as an instructor, especially primary instructor, as a bit of a necessary evil.
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