An Aborted Landing
- gregorymaness
- Jul 31, 2023
- 2 min read
Updated: Dec 22, 2024
On a recent flight I experienced my first aborted landing or "go-around" as a passenger on an airplane. We had flown through some foul weather and turbulence to reach the airport and as we appeared to be on the verge of landing on the runway the pilot applied more thrust and we pulled up and away. I made eye contact with a few of my fellow passengers and I saw some concern in their eyes. To be honest, while I wasn't terribly concerned, I knew that something had occurred that caused the pilot to abort the landing. So my fellow passengers might have seen some concern in my eyes as well.
Having watched numerous episodes of Air Disasters on Smithsonian Channel, I realize that a pilot might abort a landing for a number of reasons. It is is done for safety reasons, but it doesn't necessarily mean that a disaster was imminent or that you had a close call. In this particular case, after a delay resulting from what I assumed was conversation with air traffic control, our pilot came over the intercom to inform us that the flight crew had seen an aircraft on the ground approaching our runway and they were not certain that it was going to stop before crossing our path. Needless to say, I was very happy that he aborted the landing and tried again when the runway was clear of traffic.
One episode of Air Disasters that I remember was about a disaster that took place in Quincy, Illinois involving two aircraft that collided on the ground as one of the aircraft was landing. Fourteen people were killed. If you are interested in learning more about this particular incident, click on one or more of the links below. And if you have a trip coming up that involves flying to and/or from your destination, I hope that your pilot and flight crew are as observant, cautious, decisive, and professional as the pilot and flight crew that me and my fellow passengers had.
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