First Go-Around

kevin47881

kevin47881

Final Approach
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Time to fly!
Not with me at the helm, but a commercial flight.

Was coming back last night from Tampa -> BNA on Southwest. As is the case on each flight from there, we're on the Volls arrival which I am very familiar with.

All of the normal turns took place and we're on final. Normally WN lands on 2R or 20L for whatever reason. We were making a couple "S" turns which I figured was for traffic. Anyway, we're now on short final (gear down, full flaps) and the pilot makes a pretty significant right turn. First thought I had is that we got side stepped from 2C to 2R. The lady next to me becomes somewhat nervous and looks at me. Before I can say anything we're leveling wings and applying full power. All I say to her is, "we're going around". She looks at me nervously and I tell her 'something must not have looked right to the pilots and they believed it was best to do the landing again and that's a good thing'.

A couple minutes later the Captain comes over the intercom and stated "ATC got us a little too close to the traffic in front of us so we're gonna do the landing again" (paraphrased). The pax collectively sighed and the landing went without a hitch.

My hats off to the crew for successfully performing a manuever I imagine they don't do "live" with much regularity.

So, how many of you had a commercial flight go missed?
 
I've seen them go missed... National Airport, someone big puttered out in front of someone big landing. Someone big landing went around while someone big took off. Scary to watch actually.
 
Well, I have only done a few in 20 years at UAL. But I heard rumor that if O'Hare didn't have one or two a day, they weren't spacing the planes close enough.
 
Heck, I had it happen to me before I was a year old! My mother tells me that we were flying from Chicago to Logan (Boston), and there was someone who hadn't cleared the runway.
 
Was on a flight into St. Louis once and we went around.
 
We went around one time on a SW charter going into Missouri. We were headed into whatever town the university is in and they only had a single runway with a howling 90* crosswind.
 
I listened to about 5 airliners in a row go around at DEN after the first one reported windshear. By the time we got there I think it was gone.
 
kevin47881 said:
My hats off to the crew for successfully performing a manuever I imagine they don't do "live" with much regularity.
Click to expand...
Seems like about 1 out of every 5 landings at SFO when I am on a death tubed is balked for traffic. But no where with any regularity. I had one coming into ORD. Capt came on the intercom and stated it was because a truck had been on the runway. Ooopps!
 
My last commercial flight from St. Louis back to Fayetteville...the pilot's story was the approach controller vectored the plane inside of the FAF. It was really a non-event.
 
A couple times. Once going into PHX and once (recently) going into SFO. No big deal, pilot powers up, pitches up and away we go. So much for that on-time arrival. :nono:
 
Only once, coming into LaGuardia. We were close to the threshold - I was pretty surprised. Aircraft in front of us hadn't cleared the runway in time.
 
It happened once to me on a Southwest flight into KABQ. The pilot blamed ATC, saying something along the lines of "Air Traffic Control gave us the wrong heading" or something like that, but I'm about 90% sure the pilot just wasn't lined up and was going around to give it another go. She sounded shaky during the announcement.

Anytime a commercial plane goes around, I'm all for it, because it shows that they are willing to admit when something doesn't look right.
 
When I was towing gliders in the '70s we had a sailplane on final for the grass alongside the runway, and a 737 a mile behind and closing the gap quickly. The 737 had to give way to the glider and go around, since he's a powered aircraft and has to yield to an unpowered aircraft. The pilot wasn't impressed and I don't suppose the airline was either; it probably ate up the entire profit from that flight using the fuel to climb out and do it again.

Dan
 
I can't count how many times I was on a commercial flight the went around. Yea good for them but it always sounds like the blame ATC.
 
As a former DC10 and B757 Captain, I have went around numerous times. A couple due to weather, but mainly due to ATC "squeeze plays" resulting in preceding aircraft not clear of the runway in time for us to touchdown.
 
Welcome BlueSkyTulsa...can't wait to hear more stories from your career.

BlueSkyTulsa said:
As a former DC10 and B757 Captain, I have went around numerous times. A couple due to weather, but mainly due to ATC "squeeze plays" resulting in preceding aircraft not clear of the runway in time for us to touchdown.
Click to expand...
 
rmciottijr said:
Yea good for them but it always sounds like the blame ATC.
Click to expand...

That is because most of the time it IS ATC's fault for spacing traffic too tight.

Occasionally the preceding traffic slows sooner or more than ATC expects, and that messes up the spacing. And occasionally, pilot technique MAY come into play, but that is pretty rare.

And then there is landing traffic that misses an exit or takes their time clearing the runway that makes the following traffic have to go around.
 
I agree with what the airline pilots here are saying about the spacing. When I first started flying into airports with a lot of airline traffic I was amazed at how close they sequenced everyone, both on the same runway and on intersecting runways. It's easy to see how a small lapse in timing on either an airplane or ATC's part can cause a go-around.
 
3x in a row on AeroMexico at Monterrey; cockpit door was open, I was in the third row of seats, could very clearly hear the annunciator, "Minimums, Minimums..."

They were *not* gonna divert.

On the fourth try, immediately after the "minimums" call, they chopped and dropped.

Needless to say, we did not continue on to Los Angeles (our destination) and, while they were not obligated to do so, the airline put us all up at a hotel for the night (also technically illegal, since we had all been processed out of the country by Imigracion. It was not the airline's fault that something I ate for breakfast at the hotel made me sick as a dog.

One other go-around in an AA MD80 at DFW, when the wind shifted and they had to "spin" the airport. I felt very badly for all the controllers. This was after sitting on the ground at San Antonio for several hours after a WX divert on flight from Ft. Lauderdale to DFW. Then, after finally being able to land, we sat about 100' shy of the gate for over 45 minutes, waiting for ground folks to bring the plane in to the gate. After the day they'd had, imagine how the cockpit crew felt, seeing their destination and the end of their Very Long Day, just in front of their noses, yet unreachable.

Ah, the glamor of an airline pilot's job!
 
I've done it 4 times.

B6 at BOS, AA at DFW (after a 10 hour FRA-DFW leg in a 777), AF at CDG (after a flight from BOS), and DL at DAY. All have been because the previous traffic did not clear the runway in time.

Cheers,

-Andrew
 
Three times on various airlines at LGA...
Once for WX
Once for a T/O that was aborted by a departing plane on the crossing runway
(LGA-4-22 / 13-31)
Once for a MX truck that wandered onto an active taxiway that sorta held up a plane exiting from the approach rwy.

How do I know? My brother in law was a tower controller at LGA, then at the TRACON and now an ATC facilities manager out west
 
2 out of 450 flights in the last year...
1 as a passenger into MSP due to spacing
1 when I was up front due to vis dropping suddenly as we were coming down the slope
 
A couple of times in the last 30 years. Can't remember exactly where, but I'm thinking maybe OHR and DFW.
 
Had to go around 8 times in the last 10 years that I can recall off the top of my head:
4 at ORD: 1 for Windshear, 2 for ATC close spacing, 1 because a passenger in the 747 cleared into position and hold on our runway got up and ran into the lav.

2 at MIA on the same flight because the preceding aircraft reported severe windshear.

1 at OMA just outside the FAF cause tower said they were evacuating due to a funnel cloud they spotted.

1 at RSW because the aircraft in front of us hit an alligator on the runway.
 
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