The Go-Around - The Most Important Decision in the Pattern and Why Pilots Keep Getting It Wrong

The go-around is the most important decision a pilot makes in the traffic pattern - and accident reports show that pilots who die in runway overruns and hard landings usually knew how to execute one. The problem is rarely a lack of knowledge. It’s a failure to decide in time. Understanding the mechanics, the criteria, and the psychology behind that decision is what separates trained pilots from safe ones.

What Does the ACS Require for the Go-Around?

The FAA Airman Certification Standards for the private pilot certificate lists the go-around as a required task. On a checkride, the examiner will ask you to demonstrate it. But what the ACS doesn’t print on the page - and what examiners are specifically watching for - is whether you initiate one on your own.

Any student who has practiced can execute a go-around when an examiner calls for it. The harder test is whether you, as pilot in command, recognize a deteriorating approach and call it yourself. That’s command authority, and that’s what the certificate is supposed to represent.

The ACS requires you to make a timely decision to go around when the approach becomes unstabilized, apply full power, establish the correct pitch attitude, configure the aircraft, maintain positive control throughout, track the appropriate ground reference, and complete the pattern for another landing attempt.

What Makes an Approach “Stabilized”?

“Stabilized” sounds clear until you’re actually in the cockpit. Airline operations formalize this with a specific standard: by 500 feet AGL on an instrument approach and 300 feet AGL on a visual approach, the aircraft must meet all of the following simultaneously:

• On the correct flight path
• Within 10 knots of target approach speed
• In the landing configuration with flaps set as specified
• Descending at a consistent rate - typically no more than 1,000 feet per minute in a light trainer
• Tracking toward the touchdown zone

If any one of those criteria is significantly wrong at those altitudes, airline crews go around. Period. A Cessna 172 doesn’t fly airline procedures, but the principle is sound: by 300 feet AGL, you should know whether this approach is going somewhere good. If you’re still correcting, still chasing the glidepath, still fighting airspeed - the answer is full power.

How Do I Execute a Go-Around Correctly?

The sequence matters, and there’s one mistake buried in it that catches students every time.

Power first. Apply full throttle and simultaneously establish the correct pitch attitude for a go-around. In a Cessna 172, that’s a few degrees above the horizon - enough to arrest the descent and start the climb. With flaps extended, increased thrust produces a pitch-up tendency. Anticipate it and hold the attitude you want.

Then flaps - in stages. This is where the critical error lives. Do not retract all flaps at once. Yanking the flap handle from full flap to zero when you’re close to the ground will cause you to lose lift before the aircraft has built enough speed to compensate. In the worst case, you’ll settle back toward the runway. In the best case, you’ll have an unpleasant story to tell.

The correct procedure for the Cessna 172: retract to 20 degrees (the second notch) first. Verify a positive rate of climb. Then continue retracting on schedule as you climb and accelerate. The exact sequence is aircraft-specific - know your Pilot’s Operating Handbook cold before the checkride. The examiner may ask you to describe the procedure verbally in the oral before you touch the airplane.

Then communicate. At a towered airport, advise the controller the moment you decide: “Cessna four five Romeo, going around.” Short and clear - don’t wait until you’re climbing away. At an uncontrolled airport, make the traffic advisory: “Runway two four, going around.” Other traffic in the pattern - including the Cherokee on downwind about to turn base - needs that information.

When Should I Go Around? Three Specific Scenarios

The go-around isn’t one situation. It’s a family of situations.

High and fast on final. You’re 200 feet high and carrying 15 extra knots. Some pilots try to drag the airplane back onto the glidepath by pulling power and pushing the nose down. Even if that works, you’ll still be fast and descending steeply - not stabilized by the gate altitude. Inside 500 feet, high and fast means go around. The math doesn’t work in your favor.

Wake turbulence. You’ve established a stable final and then hit an unexpected bump near the ground, or you notice vortex signature drifting across the threshold. Go around. This is not optional. Wake turbulence close to the ground in a light aircraft is not something to ride out. Apply full power, climb, and get lateral separation from the flight path of the aircraft ahead. The FAA advisory circulars on wake turbulence are worth reading if you haven’t already.

Traffic on the runway. You’re on short final and there’s a Piper Archer still rolling out, moving slowly. Go around early. Do not try to time it. Do not assume they will clear. Full power, go around, communicate, and enter a new pattern. This scenario happens more often than it should, and the accidents that result from it happen because a pilot decided to see how it played out.

In all three scenarios, the answer is the same. What changes is the timing. Scenario one, the decision should happen at 500 feet. Scenario two, perhaps 200 feet. Scenario three, potentially 30 feet. The lower the altitude, the more precise the execution must be - and the less margin there is for hesitation.

Why Do Pilots Squeeze In Bad Approaches?

The plan was to land. The runway is right there. The effort has been invested. The brain resists changing a plan when you’re seconds away from completing it, even when new information clearly says the plan is wrong.

Accident investigators cite this constantly in the reports. Pilots who died in runway overruns and hard landings knew how to go around. They just didn’t. It’s not a training gap. It’s a decision-making failure under pressure.

The antidote is to make the go-around decision before you fly. Not in the air, when you’re task-saturated and emotionally invested in the approach. Before takeoff, at the run-up area.

How Can I Make Better Go-Around Decisions Before I Fly?

Name your go-around criteria before the flight. Not “if it looks bad” - that’s too vague. Specific, named triggers:

• “If I’m more than 10 knots fast through the numbers”
• “If I’m high at the 1,000-foot marker and still correcting”
• “If I can’t see the runway numbers when I turn final”

When you name the criteria in advance, the go-around decision becomes a rule you’re following rather than a real-time judgment call made under pressure. Rules are far easier to honor in the cockpit. Write them down. Review them before you take the runway.

Practicing go-arounds only on final - and only when an instructor calls for them - means a student has practiced the maneuver but not the decision. Practice initiating go-arounds from base leg, from the downwind-to-base turn, and during the flare when the wheels are about to touch. Normalizing the decision is as important as perfecting the execution.

Does Going Around Hurt Me on a Checkride?

No. A self-initiated go-around is often one of the best demonstrations of aeronautical decision making you can put in front of an examiner all day.

Risk management and aeronautical decision making are explicit ACS evaluation criteria. When an examiner sees a student go around because they didn’t like how the approach was developing, that’s a favorable data point - not a penalty. It demonstrates judgment. It demonstrates command authority. That is precisely what the private pilot certificate is supposed to represent.

What doesn’t demonstrate good judgment is forcing a bad landing because you didn’t want to go around. That’s ego overriding judgment, and ego has no business in the cockpit.

One checkride note: when the go-around is complete, the task isn’t done. You still need to fly the pattern correctly, establish a stabilized approach the second time, and land the airplane. Don’t let the go-around rattle you into rushing the next approach. Reset mentally. Apply the same criteria on approach number two.

Key Takeaways

• The most common go-around mistake is initiating too late - if it still feels like you might have saved the landing, your timing is probably right
• By 300 feet AGL on a visual approach, you should know whether the approach is going somewhere good; if you’re still correcting, go around
• Never retract all flaps at once during a go-around - use an intermediate setting first and verify a positive rate of climb before continuing
• Making the go-around decision before the flight - with specific named criteria - makes it a rule to follow rather than a judgment call under pressure
• A self-initiated go-around on a checkride is a positive demonstration of aeronautical decision making, not a failure