The go-around that never happens and why pilots ride bad approaches to the ground

The go-around is the most underused safety maneuver in general aviation. Loss of directional control, hard landings, runway overruns, and undershooting into terrain share a common thread in decades of FAA and NTSB accident data: the pilot had time and altitude to go around and chose not to. Setting personal go-around criteria before every approach—and practicing the maneuver regularly—is one of the most effective ways to reduce landing accident risk.

Why don’t pilots go around when they should?

The psychology behind riding a bad approach to the ground comes down to three factors.

Completion bias is the strongest. You’ve flown the pattern, configured the airplane, and the runway is right there. Your brain wants to finish the task. Abandoning it when you’re close feels wrong, even when continuing is objectively more dangerous.

The audience factor adds social pressure. At a towered field with traffic behind you, you don’t want to disrupt the sequence. With an instructor beside you, you don’t want to appear incapable. With a passenger, you don’t want them to think something went wrong.

Sunk cost thinking is the sneakiest trap. You already flew the approach, slowed down, and put the flaps in. Going around feels like wasting all that effort. But a go-around costs about three minutes and a small amount of fuel. A bad landing can cost an airplane—or worse.

What does an unstabilized approach actually look like?

An approach is stabilized when all of the following are true:

• You are on your desired glidepath
• You are at your target airspeed
• You are in proper landing configuration
• Your power setting is appropriate
• Your rate of descent is reasonable (roughly 500 feet per minute on a standard three-degree glidepath for most trainers)

If any one of these is significantly off below 500 feet AGL, the correct action is a go-around. Airlines enforce this as a hard rule because decades of accident data proved that fixing a bad approach close to the ground is where risk skyrockets.

The Airman Certification Standards (ACS) for the private pilot checkride reinforce this. Examiners expect a stabilized approach at the recommended airspeed—or in its absence, 1.3 × Vso—with a tolerance of +5/−0 knots. Flying 80 knots in a Cessna 172 when the target is 65 is not a minor deviation. It’s a go-around.

The ACS also evaluates whether the applicant “demonstrates the ability to make a timely decision to discontinue the approach.” Deciding at 50 feet while the airplane balloons is not timely. Deciding at 300 feet when you recognize you’re fast and high is.

How does a bad approach turn into an accident?

Consider this scenario. You’re flying into an unfamiliar field with a short runway, trees on the approach end, and gusty crosswinds. You turn final high. You push the nose down to recapture the glidepath, and airspeed builds. You pull power to idle but keep carrying energy. You clear the trees and float—past your touchdown point, eating up runway. You finally touch down long and stand on the brakes, wondering if you’ll stop.

Every element in that sequence was a go-around cue:

• High on final — cue
• Diving to recapture the glidepath — cue
• Fast over the threshold — cue
• Floating past the intended touchdown point — the last cue before it becomes an emergency

How do I set personal go-around gates?

Decide on specific, concrete criteria before you fly the approach—not vague intentions, but hard gates.

Gate 1: If not stabilized by 300 feet AGL, go around. Period.

Gate 2: If more than 5 knots fast crossing the threshold, go around.

Gate 3: If floating past the first third of the runway without touching down, go around.

Gate 4: If something doesn’t feel right and you can’t immediately identify why, go around.

Gate 4 may sound vague, but it’s the most important. Your brain processes enormous amounts of information on approach. Sometimes your subconscious identifies a problem before your conscious mind can name it. That uneasy feeling is experience talking. Listen to it.

How do I execute a go-around correctly?

Poor execution can turn a good decision into a dangerous situation. Follow this sequence:

1. Full power — smoothly but promptly
2. Carb heat cold (if carbureted)
3. Pitch for climb attitude — target Vy (best rate of climb speed)
4. Retract flaps one notch at a time — never yank all flaps up at once near the ground. In a Cessna 172, going from 40 degrees to zero in one motion will cause the airplane to sink back toward the runway. Retract one notch, let the airplane accelerate, then the next notch.
5. Add right rudder — going from idle to full power brings left-turning tendencies roaring back (P-factor, torque, slipstream). Without right rudder correction, the airplane yaws left. At low altitude in a nose-high attitude, an uncoordinated skid toward the ground is extremely dangerous.

How should I practice go-arounds?

Practice a deliberate go-around on every session of pattern work—not because anything went wrong, but so the muscle memory is there when something does. Request practice from different points: short final, the flare, and the float after a bounce. Each has a different feel and requires a slightly different response.

If you bounce, go around. A bounced landing puts the airplane in a nose-high, decelerating, energy-depleted state. Attempting to re-flare after a bounce risks porpoise oscillations that can drive the nosewheel into the pavement. The recovery from a bounce is full power, fly away, and try again. Every time.

The go-around is not a failure

Some of the best pilots go around more often than average pilots—not because they fly worse approaches, but because they hold higher standards and carry zero ego about it. Airline captains with 20,000+ hours break off approaches at 200 feet because a wind shift didn’t feel right. Nobody thinks less of them. Everyone thinks more of them.

The day you stop being embarrassed about a go-around is the day you become a significantly safer pilot.

For further study, the FAA Safety Briefing on go-around decision making and the AOPA Air Safety Institute’s accident case studies on botched approaches are both excellent resources.

Key Takeaways

• The go-around is a professional maneuver, not a failure. Completion bias, audience pressure, and sunk-cost thinking are the real reasons pilots ride bad approaches to the ground.
• Set concrete go-around gates before every approach: not stabilized by 300 feet AGL, more than 5 knots fast at the threshold, floating past the first third, or anything that doesn’t feel right.
• Execute the go-around correctly: full power, carb heat cold, pitch for Vy, flaps up one notch at a time, and right rudder to counter left-turning tendencies.
• Always go around after a bounce. Trying to salvage a bounced landing risks porpoising and nosewheel damage.
• Practice go-arounds deliberately from different points in the approach on every pattern session so the muscle memory is automatic when it counts.