Learn › Go-arounds

What is a go-around?

Why an airliner sometimes powers up just before touchdown — and why that is a good thing.

You are a few hundred feet from the runway, the wheels are down, and suddenly the engines roar and the aircraft climbs away. It can feel alarming from the cabin, but a go-around — abandoning an approach and climbing away to try again — is a completely normal, rehearsed manoeuvre. Pilots practise it in every simulator check, and controllers plan for it on every approach.

Why aircraft go around

• An unstable approach. Airlines require an approach to be "stable" by a set height — typically 1,000 ft above the runway in cloud and 500 ft in clear weather: on the right path, at the right speed, configured for landing, with a normal rate of descent. If it is not, the rule is simple: go around.
• The runway is not clear. The aircraft ahead has not yet vacated, a departure is slow to roll, or a vehicle or animal is on the runway.
• Too close behind the aircraft ahead. If the spacing on final has shrunk below the minimum — including the extra wake turbulence distance — the follower cannot be allowed to land.
• Weather. Wind shear, a sudden gust, heavy rain, or reaching the decision height without seeing the runway.
• An instruction from ATC, for any of the reasons above.

What the crew does

The go-around is flown from memory: the pilot flying pushes the thrust levers to take-off/go-around power (often a single "TOGA" button press), raises the nose, retracts one stage of flap, and calls "positive rate, gear up" once the aircraft is climbing. They then fly the missed approach procedure printed on the approach chart — a climb straight ahead or a turn to a set heading, up to a published altitude, sometimes to a holding fix — and tell ATC: "Speedbird one one seven, going around."

What ATC does

When ATC initiates it, the instruction is short and unmistakable: "Speedbird one one seven, go around, I say again, go around", followed by any change to the published procedure — "climb altitude three thousand feet, turn right heading three six zero". The tower coordinates with approach, which takes the aircraft back, keeps it clear of the departures climbing out of the same runway, and slots it back into the arrival sequence. At a busy airport that means finding a gap in a stream that has kept on moving, which is why a go-around costs the system several minutes.

Why it is safe

Go-arounds are rare — a small fraction of approaches end in one — but they are deliberately treated as a normal outcome of any approach, not a failure. The reason is grim but simple: many of the worst approach-and-landing accidents happened because a crew pressed on with an unstable approach instead of going around. Airline culture now repeats the opposite lesson: a go-around is never the wrong decision. Climbing away with full power, clear of the ground, with a published route to follow, is one of the safest places an aircraft can be.

Go-arounds in the simulator

In the ATC Radar Simulator, arrivals go around for the same reasons real ones do: when they reach the final few miles too close behind the aircraft ahead, when they are still far above the glideslope close in (an unstable approach), or when the runway is still occupied by the previous landing. They climb straight ahead on runway heading to the missed-approach altitude and wait for your instructions — and each one costs 100 points. Build an even stream onto the ILS and you will rarely see one; squeeze the spacing and you will learn exactly why controllers respect the minimums.