Flaps and slats are deployed in a sequence, depending on your speed. On the 767 that I fly, we have settings of flaps 1, flaps 5, flaps 15, flaps 20 and flaps 25. We will cycle through each of those during a typical approach and landing (There’s also a flaps 30 setting, but we don’t normally use it.) It’s really not something you can “forget.” The plane won’t even allow you to slow down beyond certain thresholds unless the required amount of flaps and slats are set. And yes, there are alarms as well.

In your case… What maybe happened is that ATC permitted (or asked) your flight to stay at a high-enough speed during the approach that flaps simply weren’t needed until close to the airport. At which point the crew realized they were maybe TOO close to get slowed down in time, so they went around.

Going into JFK airport late at night or early in the morning, when traffic is light, we can sometimes keep the speed at 250 knots or so until only six or seven miles from the runway! Then we pull the power back and start to deploy the flaps and gear. It’s kinda fun. (I don’t know how the 737 decelerates as compared to the 767.)

However, if you really were “just a couple miles” from the airport, that’s a little different. I would suggest the flaps weren’t working the first time around, and that they were setting up for a “no-flap landing,” but that would’ve entailed a delay while they prepared everything and troubleshot the problem. Also they’d have made a PA, etc., because you’d be landing a LOT faster than normal.

So…. I dunno.

Anyway I was flying into Portland OR on a drizzly calm night, in a window seat behind the wing. At one point, about twelve, fifteen miles out, I realized that the flaps hadn’t been extended yet, well after I thought they would normally be. But what do I know, right?. And when they still hadn’t been extended after we turned for home down the Columbia, about eight miles out, I became more than a tad concerned. Just a couple miles, maybe less, off the runway, there were still No. Flaps. Whatsoever, and red lights and sirens were going off in my head. I wasn’t relishing a midnight swim in the Columbia in forty degree weather. At that point, though, we pulled up and did a go-around, my first (and only) one ever. Flaps and landing were normal the second time around. No announcement, and I doubt many, even those who were awake, were aware of the go-around. For the record, it was a 737-800.

So, four questions:
1. Huh?
2. How is this possible?
3. Aren’t there warnings and alarms in the cockpit?
4. If it was pilot error, what consequences would these pilots face?

Presumably checking the actual position would be going back and looking out a window, in the same way that one hears of pilots going down in to the cargo hold to check if the landing gear is actually down or not when an indicator may have failed.

Commanded vs. indicated vs. actual is always a distinction I’ve loved; I think it shows not only a sensibility to error but a certain humbleness we need with regard to the devices and systems we create. Just because we command something to happen does not always mean it does.

When I mentioned this to a pilot friend, he brushed it off not thinking much of it and this also left a bad impression on me.

Your thoughts please?