[eno_]

It was a nearly moonless night, which makes it tough, but there are also street lights adjacent to the golf course, and the plane probably has lights.

Hitting wires or cartwheeling off a sand trap would be the big worries. But, as has been pointed out, burning alive is a bigger worry than most anything else.

[Moonman62]

The lights make the problem worse, as they make the golf course much darker by comparison, and they ruin night adaptation for the pilot's eyes. They were only a couple of miles from the airport, and there are a couple of well lit highways they could have landed on.