I think you misinterpret what e.g. FedEx do. Brief the go-around before every landing, so be spring loaded for it if you have to. The problem in many of these GA go-around accidents is, IMHO, that the pilot tries to save a bad landing and makes the go-around decision way too late. We don’t know enough yet about this accident, but it sounds exactly like that.
Yes; I was talking in the GA context.
Lots of stuff differs e.g. in airlines you aim for the TDZ whereas in GA you aim for the start of the runway, not least because you often do not have a “balanced runway” situation.
Sebastian_G wrote:
I am not fully convinced by this kind of go arounds. If you simply continue a bad landing after the plane more or less made contact with the ground you might damage the aircraft but everybody will likely walk away. If you do a go around it is all or nothing. If it works out you are the hero and the plane will be just fine. If it does not work out death is a likely outcome.
Well that is not really true if you land a tailwheel aircraft… if you start bouncing you need to add power. If there is not much runway left that means a go around, otherwise you can climb a few meters and land a bit further. But anyone flying a tailwheel aircraft should know that.
I agree with making the decision earlier, in general.
The real problem is when the ground effect is sudden and strong (on a short runway), or when there is a substantial bounce. I think this has to be trained specifically. It’s basically piloting judgment, but at what IAS do you prefer to go around or continue the landing after bouncing or floating ? If you do a second flare you risk overruning the runway or even stalling at 20ft, and if you add power you risk getting stuck behind the power curve.
WingsWaterAndWheels wrote:
Well that is not really true if you land a tailwheel aircraft… if you start bouncing you need to add power.
I was thinking this, when I first started flying my RV I had to go around following a bounced attempt at a wheel landing. Much better than trying to save the landing from that point.
Agree that the “every approach is a go around with a landing __if we’re lucky”__ idea is silly. An instructor told me that once. I see the point but if you’re that unsure about your ability to land consistently then you have a problem.
This depends a lot on the perspective and airplane in use.
In my first 600 flight hours I had no option of going around. There simply was no engine. So any approach had magically to be resolved by a landing. I’m still alive, so are most glider pilots.
The other side of the spectrum is IFR flying, where the mantra comes from that @IO390 mentioned. I think it’s rather a question that literally evolved from the missed approach point idea.
Technically the question is not whether the landing will be “good enough “, but whether the approach may be continued or not.
I do go around where I believe it is necessary and land whenever I see it is possible. Any issue that may be resolved in the approach leads to a landing.
The traffic pattern is where for sure one of the highest accident concentration is. So I only do as much as necessary in there.
172driver wrote:
That’s seriously weird. Why would anyone do that? Strikes me as a pretty idiotic thing to do, as you already have your hands full cleaning up the airplane and the last thing you want is to introduce more complexity in this situation, not to mention the higher stall speed in a bank.
There’s no banking and turning, only a slight low right wing to get you off center by 100 feet or so. In the old days it was the normal procedure here at ENVA. It was also a procedure that the tower used to keep the circuit going when lots of traffic. You could be asked to “make a low approach well north” (the exact wording). What it meant was to make the go around at max 500 feet and the “well” word meant 100-ish meters. You could get that on the last seconds of final. They stopped that some years ago, don’t remember when, but it’s ages since I have done it. I guess the intent was to clear up the runway (and keep the circuit going).
Today, whenever there are just two planes in the circuit, one is asked to fly left circuits, the other right. A seriously clunky system because there is no way for each of them to see each other. If there is one more coming, it will be chaos. The way they solve it is for one to hold at 1500 AGL until one of the others has stopped flying circuits (landed). ENVA is in C airspace (for some reason, all other airports in Norway are either in G or D if I’m not mistaken). The CAT traffic was much lower back then, while the VFR traffic was higher, so this probably has something to do with it. Don’t know, it for sure was a million times more flexible though.
In general I think there are too few go-arounds being done these days, not too many. Making a go around to the right of center, don’t see anything wrong with it.
This is a strange debate going on about power curves etc. In training, I assume we all do loads of circuits so that is not a problem part of the go round. I take it we are all taught to go round or go missed if our approach is not stable or if another aircraft looks as if it might encroach or an animal is on the field or for any other reason. Done correctly it doesn’t matter whether you are at 200’ 100’ or 20’ it should not be a problem.
Many of us did hundreds of touch an goes during training so a go round after wheels touching should not be a problem.
On taildraggers if you bounce on landing you add a bit of power and bleed it off again to touch down further up the field or we go round. The same principle applies to a bounced landing on a nose wheel machine.
We should know the length of the field and any obstacles and the performance of our aircraft before we take off.
The idea of letting a perfectly good aircraft run off the end of a runway and crashing rather than going around is bizarre to me.
Landing at some fields such as mountain fields where a go round is not possible, excepted here.
gallois wrote:
Landing at some fields such as mountain fields where a go round is not possible, excepted here.
A go-around is always possible, until you reach the point where it isn’t 
There are few one way strips around. They are usually private strips, thus short and narrow, and also hilly (which helps). If it’s anywhere you would for sure “need” the possibility of a go-around it’s at those places, only that possibility is nonexistent when reaching a certain point
Inkognito wrote:
Do air brakes make a difference in your opinion?
No. The capabilities of the aircraft as a whole, the situation and the experience/skills of the captain decides it in my eyes.
I have done go-arounds from any phase of the landing, including centimeters above runway (runway not yet vacated) and seconds after landing (seen objects on runway end). However, I do remember that I never had a critical situation when I did a go-around but at least one in the last years where I should have gone around (nothing happened, and it would’ve been only minor damage to the aircraft, but it was quite close on a 500 meter runway). So this counts in for the “do always a go-around” fraction.
I can agree to the taildragger part. One has to get the feeling for it and it can get ugly quite quickly. I never came to perfection here (didn’t fly much in taildraggers) so: going around was a totally valid option for me, too.
Maybe that’s also an explanation for the different points of view about go arounds. I know that I can land my aircraft, have done extensive training on difficult birds with up to 40 knots wind from the side. But on taildraggers I would change that point of view a lot, as I’m not so overconfident that any landing will succeed. So to summarize, I don’t think that we will arrive at a general rule that is valid for any pilot and any runway.
By the way I also do go-arounds offset to the runway to the right when another aircraft is involved (due to better visibility). I was also taught so. I do the same when taking off from a runway where a bigger airplane started before (due to vortex, so nose into the wind to evade them). It’s no general thing for me, just situational awareness.
