Narrative:

We called the airport in sight about 15 NM west and were cleared for the visual runway 34L at vny. Copilot was flying and verbally said his plan; proceed to the 101 and follow it east and join final for 34L. We started to configure and descend for landing; everything still seemed normal; maybe configured a little early; but still acceptable. He called for gear down; landing checks; then flaps 40; so once I selected that I proceeded to do the before landing checklist. While I was head down running the checklist I heard the egpws say 'object.' surprised; I looked up and verbally repeated the warning to the flying pilot. I didn't get a response from him; during this I was scanning outside and saw that we were low (estimated 800 ft). I didn't see the runway; so I glanced back down and saw we were 5 NM from the airport. Right then the egpws said 'object;' a second time. I proceeded to pull back on the yoke and said; 'where are you going? Go around!' he did and then admitted that he had; 'lost sight of the airport.' I let tower know and I gave vectors to the flying pilot to final because I was unsure if he was situationally aware yet. We landed without incident. We debriefed after the flight. I asked; 'what were you looking at?' he said he had seen red lights that he thought was the end of the runway and had got fixated on them. I asked if he had heard the egpws warnings? He said no. I reiterated to always cross check instruments; especially on visual approaches! We had the visual 34L in the FMS and I had verbally told him navigation and VNAV were armed. He was so fixated he didn't recognize the map on the pfd showed him 5 NM from the airport and the VNAV showed very low. As far as factors; we were just finishing a trip in from hawaii (5 hours in flight). He was very receptive in the debrief and I am very confident it wont happen again.

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Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: The First Officer of a corporate jet flight crew got disoriented at night on a visual approach to VNY. An EGPWS warning alerted the Captain who directed a go-around.

Narrative: We called the airport in sight about 15 NM west and were cleared for the visual Runway 34L at VNY. Copilot was flying and verbally said his plan; proceed to the 101 and follow it east and join final for 34L. We started to configure and descend for landing; everything still seemed normal; maybe configured a little early; but still acceptable. He called for gear down; landing checks; then flaps 40; so once I selected that I proceeded to do the before landing checklist. While I was head down running the checklist I heard the EGPWS say 'OBJECT.' Surprised; I looked up and verbally repeated the warning to the flying pilot. I didn't get a response from him; during this I was scanning outside and saw that we were low (estimated 800 FT). I didn't see the runway; so I glanced back down and saw we were 5 NM from the airport. Right then the EGPWS said 'OBJECT;' a second time. I proceeded to pull back on the yoke and said; 'Where are you going? Go around!' He did and then admitted that he had; 'lost sight of the airport.' I let Tower know and I gave vectors to the flying pilot to final because I was unsure if he was situationally aware yet. We landed without incident. We debriefed after the flight. I asked; 'What were you looking at?' He said he had seen red lights that he thought was the end of the runway and had got fixated on them. I asked if he had heard the EGPWS warnings? He said No. I reiterated to always cross check instruments; especially on visual approaches! We had the Visual 34L in the FMS and I had verbally told him NAV and VNAV were armed. He was so fixated he didn't recognize the map on the PFD showed him 5 NM from the airport and the VNAV showed very low. As far as factors; we were just finishing a trip in from Hawaii (5 hours in flight). He was very receptive in the debrief and I am very confident it wont happen again.

Data retrieved from NASA's ASRS site as of April 2012 and automatically converted to unabbreviated mixed upper/lowercase text. This report is for informational purposes with no guarantee of accuracy. See NASA's ASRS site for official report.