The go-around you almost didn't make and why adding full power feels so wrong when you're fifty feet from the runway
The go-around is your most important tool in the traffic pattern—here's why pilots resist it and how to execute it confidently.
The go-around is the single most important pilot-in-command decision you can make in the traffic pattern, yet pilots consistently resist executing it. The National Transportation Safety Board has found that a significant number of loss-of-control accidents on final approach share one common thread: the pilot had the option to go around and didn’t take it. Understanding both the mechanics and the psychology behind this maneuver can save your airplane—and your life.
Why Does Going Around Feel So Wrong?
Everything about the approach primes your brain to land. You’ve flown the pattern, extended flaps, briefed the landing, and you’re fifty feet above the threshold. Your brain has already checked the “landing” box.
This is plan continuation bias—a well-documented human factors concept where your brain actively resists changing a committed plan. The plan was to land. Now something is telling you not to, and overriding that commitment takes deliberate effort and practice.
The instinct to salvage a bad approach—to fix the airspeed, correct the drift, or wait out the traffic ahead—is the most dangerous impulse a pilot can have in the pattern.
What Does a Stabilized Approach Actually Look Like?
The Airman Certification Standards (ACS) defines clear parameters for a normal approach to landing:
- Within +5/-0 knots of your target approach speed by short final
- Consistent descent rate
- Tracking the extended centerline
- Relatively steady power setting
- Configuration (flaps, gear) set and confirmed
When any of these parameters breaks down below 200 feet AGL, the answer is a go-around. Every time. No negotiation.
How Do You Execute the Go-Around?
Part of the hesitation comes from not being confident in how the go-around actually feels. Here’s what happens physically:
When you push the throttle to full power, the nose pitches up because you’ve been trimmed for descent. In a single-engine airplane with a clockwise-rotating propeller, you’ll also get a left-turning tendency. The airplane wants to balloon. This is normal—not an emergency.
The sequence:
- Full power. Carb heat off if applicable.
- Pitch to climb attitude. Actively push forward to counteract nose-up trim. Do not let the nose rise above your normal climb pitch.
- Right rudder to stay coordinated.
- Retract one notch of flaps. Not all at once—reduce drag incrementally while building airspeed.
- Positive rate, airspeed increasing—retract the next notch of flaps, then the last.
- Fly the pattern and try again.
The entire active hands-and-feet sequence takes about four seconds. After that, you’re climbing normally.
How Do You Build the Go-Around Mindset?
The best technique: brief the go-around before you brief the landing.
On downwind, before starting your descent checklist, say out loud: “If anything doesn’t look right on final, I’m going around. Full power, carb heat, pitch, flaps, fly the pattern.”
Every time. Make the go-around the default plan. Make the landing the thing that only happens if everything goes right. When you frame it this way, you’re not overriding a decision—you’re executing your primary plan.
What About the Checkride?
A well-executed voluntary go-around is not a failure on a checkride—it’s a demonstration of pilot-in-command authority. Designated Pilot Examiners consistently say that an unprompted go-around when conditions warrant it is one of the best things they can see. It tells them you’ll make safe decisions when no one is watching.
The ACS requires you to demonstrate a go-around. The examiner wants to see that you recognize when to do it, not just how.
When Should You Go Around From a Bounced Landing?
A small bounce where you can hold pitch attitude and let the airplane settle may be recoverable. But for a significant bounce—three or four feet back in the air with the energy state all wrong—the answer is go around.
Do not push the nose down onto the runway from a bounce. That’s how you collapse nose gear. That’s how you porpoise and drive the propeller into the pavement. A bounce is the airplane telling you the approach was wrong. Full power. Fly away. Come back.
Does Going Around Make You Look Bad?
No. Tower controllers see go-arounds every single day. They have a procedure for it and will slot you right back into the pattern. The other pilots in the pattern have all done it too.
The radio call is simple: “Going around, traffic on the runway.” No drama. No apology. Total cost is about three minutes of fuel and one lap in the pattern.
How Do You Keep Go-Around Skills Sharp?
Practice go-arounds when things are going well. On a calm day with solid approaches, call one go-around just to maintain muscle memory. Feel what full power does to the trim. Feel the right rudder. Feel the airplane accelerate and climb away.
Make it routine. The day you actually need it, you want your hands and feet to know the sequence without conscious thought.
Key Takeaways
- The go-around is your first and best tool, not a last resort—treat it as the default plan on every approach
- Plan continuation bias is the real enemy; brief the go-around on every downwind leg to pre-load the decision
- The physical sequence takes four seconds: full power, pitch, rudder, flaps incrementally
- Expect the nose to pitch up when you add power—this is normal trim response, not something going wrong
- Nobody judges you for going around; three minutes of fuel is always cheaper than a bent airplane
References: FAA Airplane Flying Handbook, ACS stabilized approach criteria.
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