“Citation three nine six delta mike, you are following 172 three miles ahead, and you are sixty knots faster.” Addison Tower was planting a warning message. It was IMC, and approach control had vectored me a little tight on this drizzling spring morning. “Okay, I said, we’re slowing to minimum approach speed.”
It didn’t take long for this plan to explode.
“Six delta mike, cancel approach clearance and fly the published missed.” Crap. Now what?
Why is such a simple clearance so unsettling?
For most of us, the missed approach is something we seldom do outside of the simulator or annual training in the airplane. And even then, we usually know when the maneuver is coming. It’s just not something we do often enough in the real world to accomplish smoothly. When it happens unexpectedly, we fumble.
Pickle, power, pitch, flaps, gear, flaps. Go around toggled. Takeoff power. Oops. Too much power, and the nose is pitching too much. Why are the passengers yelling? I can’t talk to them now. What was the go-around altitude? What’s the autopilot doing? Why is the airplane not climbing?
executing a go-around
Most unplanned go-arounds are just ugly. And in the airline world, the unplanned go-around sometimes results in a truly dangerous unstabilized situation.
To make matters worse, we associate go-arounds with a failure of our flying abilities.
You have probably been on a commercial flight and experienced a go-around. And what is the first thing that popped into your mind?
“I wonder who screwed up? Was it the captain or the controller?” Somebody made a mistake.
Let me propose to you that the act of a go-around is the best example of a command decision you can make in an airplane. Say that previous sentence out loud to yourself.
If you think about it, virtually every landing accident you see on the national news could be avoided by simply going around. By giving yourself some time to think. An opportunity to try it again or divert elsewhere. Yet we think we can fix the situation. We continue down a bad path to one that is even worse.
And when we find ourselves on an approach in situations that really require a go-round, we often don’t. We continue the approach because we don’t want to admit failure.
We can fix it. Until we can’t.
What if we could change our beliefs? What if a go-around was celebrated instead of criticized? What if ATC didn’t ask in a critical tone for the reason? Years ago, a chief pilot typically questioned the crew’s decision to go around. Today, there are more and more flight departments that commend this decision. That’s a step in the right direction.
But if we are going to do it more often, we need to get better at it.
Fly safe.
