The Go-Around, the Balked Landing, and Why the Pilots Who Fail It Are the Ones Who Waited Too Long to Decide

The go-around is one of the most safety-critical maneuvers in the traffic pattern, yet most pilots who bend airplanes doing it aren’t failing because they can’t fly it - they’re failing because they waited too long to decide. A go-around is a maneuver (the mechanical act of transitioning from descent to climb), while a rejected landing is a decision (choosing not to land out of a given approach). Master both by building preset triggers and briefing the maneuver before every approach, so that when the moment comes, all that’s left is the doing.

Go-Around vs. Rejected Landing: What’s the Difference?

The FAA Airman Certification Standards (ACS) lists this task as “go-around/rejected landing,” and pilots often use the terms interchangeably. In your head, keep them separate.

A go-around is a skill. It’s power, pitch, configuration, climb away, and rejoin the pattern or fly the missed approach. You can practice it and get smooth at it.

A rejected landing is the moment you look at what’s happening and decide, “No, not this one.” The go-around is what you do. The rejected landing is the choice to do it.

Nearly every ugly outcome comes from a pilot who nailed the maneuver but blew the decision - they could fly the go-around just fine, they just started it about four seconds too late.

Is Going Around a Sign of Failure?

No. This belief has killed people, so it’s worth being blunt about it. Somewhere in training, many pilots pick up the quiet idea that going around means you messed up - that a “real pilot” would have salvaged it, and that the instructor or examiner will think less of you for climbing away.

The go-around is not the mistake. The go-around is the tool that saves you from the mistake. The most professional thing you will ever do in an airplane is look at a bad approach and calmly decide it isn’t going to become a landing.

When Should I Go Around? Five Triggers to Preset

Build yourself a set of bright lines - things that, if you see them, the decision is already made. You don’t debate. You don’t negotiate with the airplane. You go.

1. You are not stable. By a gate on final - say 500 feet in visual conditions - you want to be on speed, on your descent path, in landing configuration, with power settled. If you’re fast, high, low, still fighting to get configured, or the airplane is flying you, go around. You almost never win the fight to fix a fundamentally broken approach in the last few hundred feet.

2. The bounce. A small bounce can be caught. A big bounce, or a second bounce where the nose is pitching and you’re unsure of your height, is a go-around. A bounce that builds - each one bigger than the last - is how you break a nose gear or worse. When in doubt, power in, fly away, come back.

3. The runway isn’t clear. A deer steps out. An airplane taxis across at the far end. Tower clears someone to line up and wait and it feels too close. You don’t need a mid-air’s worth of certainty - you just need enough doubt.

4. The wind showed you something you didn’t sign up for. A gust rolls you at the flare. The windsock swings. You’re running out of rudder in the crosswind. The conditions right now are past what you want to accept right now. Go around and reassess.

5. You just don’t like it. That’s a completely legitimate reason. You don’t owe anyone an explanation for choosing not to force a landing you’re not comfortable with.

Why Does Deciding Early Matter So Much?

The whole game is deciding early. Every trigger has a version where you catch it high and a version where you catch it low.

If you reject a bad approach at 500 feet, you have altitude, airspeed, and time to be smooth - the go-around is a non-event. If you wait until you’re in the flare, three feet off the concrete and ballooning, you’re now flying the hardest version of this maneuver at the lowest, slowest, most vulnerable moment there is.

The mistake is almost never going around. The mistake is the delay. Those four seconds of “let me just see if I can save it” cost you altitude, cost you options, and load you up right when you can least afford it.

How Do I Fly the Go-Around? Step by Step

Every airplane spells out its own version, so learn your specific sequence from the flight manual and your instructor. This is the shape of it:

1. Power. Smoothly to full or go-around power - not a violent stab, but without hesitation.
2. Pitch. Set your climb attitude. As power comes in, the nose wants to rise and yaw.
3. Right rudder. Probably more than you expect. Low airspeed plus high power brings out every left-turning tendency at once.
4. Control the pitch. Full power at low speed with full flaps and a climbing nose can put you on the edge of a stall. Fly the attitude - don’t just haul back.
5. Configuration in stages. Retract flaps to an intermediate setting first so you don’t dump all your lift at once. Establish a positive climb, then bring up the rest, then deal with retractable gear. Verify you’re actually climbing before you clean everything up.
6. Fly the airplane. Climb at the proper speed - best angle if you need to clear something. Sidestep to the right of the runway if you’re overflying traffic so you can keep it in sight. Communicate with the tower or make your call at a non-towered field, and rejoin the pattern.

The whole thing: power, pitch, right rudder, flaps in stages, positive climb, clean up, fly the pattern.

What Does the Examiner Look For on a Go-Around?

This is a required ACS task, and it will show up. Often the examiner simulates it: you’ll be on short final, everything fine, and they’ll say “go around.”

• A timely decision. That word “timely” carries a lot of weight in the standards. What they’re really testing is the gap between the words leaving their mouth and your hand moving the throttle. They want that gap short.
• The right sequence. Power, then pitch and configuration in the correct order - without dumping all the flaps at once, without letting the airplane sink or stall.
• Positive, coordinated control. Right rudder in, airspeed managed, a climb established at the proper speed.
• Divided attention. Fly the airplane while you clean up and communicate - don’t fixate on one thing and forget the other three.

What busts pilots most often is the slow hand: the airplane keeps descending for a couple of seconds while the pilot processes the call. Or the flaps come all the way up at once and the airplane settles. Or the right rudder is forgotten and the ball slides into the corner. Every one of these improves with practice and worsens with hesitation.

How Do I Practice Go-Arounds Effectively?

Brief the go-around before every single approach - out loud. Make it part of your landing checklist, right alongside your speeds. Something like: “If this approach isn’t stable by the numbers, or if anything doesn’t look right, I’m going around - full power, pitch for climb, flaps in stages, right rudder, fly the pattern.”

When you brief it before you need it, you’ve already made the decision. So when a deer walks out or a gust grabs you, you’re not deciding under stress - you’re executing a plan you made when your brain was calm.

Then go fly them. Ask your instructor to throw them at you. Go up on a calm day and fly ten in a row until the sequence lives in your hands. Fly them out of normal approaches, out of slightly ugly approaches, and low - so that the day it counts, it’s just another go-around. A non-event, exactly as it should be.

The pilots who get hurt were never the ones who couldn’t fly it. They were the ones who spent four seconds hoping when they should have spent zero seconds deciding.

Key Takeaways

• A go-around is a maneuver; a rejected landing is a decision. Most accidents come from a good maneuver started too late.
• Preset your triggers: unstable by 500 feet, a building bounce, an unclear runway, unacceptable wind, or simply not liking the approach.
• Decide early. Catching it high makes the go-around boring; waiting until the flare makes it dangerous.
• Fly the sequence in order: power, pitch, right rudder, flaps in stages, positive climb, then clean up and fly the pattern.
• Brief the go-around out loud before every approach so the decision is pre-made and only the execution remains.