Let’s face it: Go-arounds are inconvenient. They make you late, burn more gas, complicate air traffic situations and often scare the heck out of your passengers, who probably think you did something wrong. Inconvenient, yes, but essential to safe flying.
The Foundation’s Approach and Landing Accident Reduction Tool Kit was developed to reduce the risk of this most common form of accident, and one of the key elements of the advice it contains is the warning against unstabilized approaches. Early in the approach, the focus should be on maintaining or regaining a stabilized approach. At the end, however, there is but one remedy if the approach is still unstabilized: go around.
Most pilots are aware of this advice and do not dispute its general validity. However, recent studies from Airbus and the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration have shown that although unstabilized approaches are rare — only 3–4 percent of all approaches — only 2–3 percent of the unstablize…
