September 19, 2023. Going Around.
Here in Boston the other day, a United Airlines jet performed a go-around just prior to landing due to a non-critical traffic conflict. That’s when a plane, at some point prior to touchdown, breaks off its approach and zooms up again. “Aborted landing” is a sometimes-used term that means the same thing.
The incident made the local news because… well, just because. Passengers “gasped,” according to FOX 25 News, which ran both online and TV segments about the incident.
I say “incident,” but only for lack of a better word. Go-arounds can be unsettling for nervous and even non-nervous flyers, but I can’t overemphasize how routine the maneuver is for pilots. And as I’ve written before, the transition from descent to ascent, however abrupt, is perfectly natural for an airplane. The noises and sensations make a go-around feel a lot scarier than it is.
Neither are most go-arounds performed in response to some imminent danger or catastrophe. I notice the FOX story contains this line: “When a go-around occurs, the air traffic controller and pilot are said to be working together to ‘prevent an unsafe condition from occurring.’”
That’s a direct quote from my book, by the way, and from an earlier post on this site. They obviously saw it, but didn’t attribute it for some reason. They used the “said to be,” to avoid citing me directly. The reporters, to their credit, make a decent effort to point out the harmlessness of go-arounds, but the fact this was a news story at all is, for a pilot, a little annoying.
I’m typically at the controls for a go-around once a year or so, on average. That doesn’t sound like a lot, but the maneuver is straightforward and we practice them all the time in the simulator.
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Photo courtesy of Patrick Tomasso/Unsplash.
