The go-around you keep talking yourself out of and the three seconds that save the landing

The go-around is the single most professional decision a pilot can make, yet student and low-time pilots resist it more than any other maneuver. Understanding when to abandon an approach, how to execute the procedure, and why your brain fights against it can mean the difference between a safe landing and an accident report. The technique itself takes about three seconds: full power, pitch, fly.

Why Do Pilots Resist the Go-Around?

Your brain has a built-in flaw called plan continuation error. Once you start a landing, every instinct pushes you to finish it. Psychologists call it completion bias. You started the approach, the runway is right there, and your internal monologue sounds like this: I’m close enough. I can fix this. I’ll just slip it in.

That internal math is almost always wrong.

Airline captains go around. Military pilots go around. The best stick-and-rudder pilots in the world go around. It is not a failure. It is not an admission of defeat. It is a core professional skill.

The FAA and NTSB have documented this problem extensively. Loss of control on landing is one of the most common accident categories in general aviation, and a significant percentage of those accidents share one cause: the pilot tried to save an approach that was already lost.

What Does an Unstabilized Approach Look Like?

Recognizing an unstabilized approach is the first step. Here are the warning signs:

• More than one dot high on the VASI or PAPI
• Airspeed more than 10 knots above target on final
• Not aligned with runway centerline below 500 feet AGL
• Running out of rudder authority to correct for crosswind

Any single factor might be salvageable. Two together? Go around. Three? You should have gone around 30 seconds ago.

How Do You Fly a Go-Around?

The procedure takes three seconds to initiate. Practicing it on the ground makes it automatic in the air.

Step 1: Full power. Push the throttle smoothly but firmly all the way forward. In a Cessna 172, that means going from roughly 1,500 RPM on short final to full throttle. The nose will pitch up and yaw left. Apply right rudder to compensate.

Step 2: Pitch for climb attitude. Not level flight, not a zoom climb. A normal climb attitude, roughly 7 to 10 degrees nose up on the attitude indicator, the same as a departure climb.

Step 3: Retract flaps incrementally. This is the step pilots get wrong. Do not retract full flaps to zero all at once. That invites a stall or a sink back onto the runway. In a Cessna 172, go from 30 degrees to 20 degrees first. Let the airplane accelerate. Then reduce to 10 degrees. Then retract fully once you have a positive rate of climb and safe airspeed.

Step 4: Fly the airplane. Climb out, re-enter the traffic pattern, and set up for another approach.

Full power. Pitch. Fly. Everything after that is good airmanship.

When Floating Eats Your Runway

Consider this scenario at a nontowered airport. The wind was reported as variable at 5 knots on departure. After a few laps in the pattern, the windsock shifts. What was a gentle headwind is now a quartering tailwind. Ground speed on final is higher than expected. The airplane floats past the numbers, past the thousand-foot markers, and still has not touched down.

The math is unforgiving. At 60 knots ground speed, every second of float past the intended touchdown point consumes roughly 100 feet of runway. Five seconds of float burns 500 feet of pavement. On a 3,000-foot runway, that may be the difference between stopping safely and running off the departure end into a ditch, fence, or road.

If You Can Do It for the Tower, You Can Do It for Yourself

When a tower controller says “traffic on the runway, go around,” pilots execute immediately. No debate, no hesitation. The airplane does not know who gave the command. The procedure is identical. The only difference is the voice. Sometimes that voice needs to be yours.

How to Build the Go-Around Habit

Brief the go-around before every approach. Out loud, before turning base: “If this approach is not stabilized by 200 feet, I am going around. Full power, pitch, flaps, climb out, re-enter the pattern.”

Making the decision before the pressure builds removes the need to think it through in the moment, when your hands are full and the wind is pushing you around.

Practice go-arounds when you don’t need them. On your next flight with an instructor, pick one approach per session and execute a full go-around. Do it from different points: short final, the flare, even a bounced landing. Build the muscle memory so your hands know what to do before your brain finishes arguing with itself.

What the Checkride Expects

The Airman Certification Standards (ACS) for the private pilot checkride are explicit. The examiner evaluates your ability to recognize when a stabilized approach is not achievable and to initiate a go-around “without hesitation.” That phrase carries weight, because hesitation is precisely what causes accidents.

An examiner will not fail you for executing a go-around. In fact, it demonstrates judgment and discipline, proof that you understand the airplane is a tool and you are the decision-maker.

Key Takeaways

• The go-around is not a failure. It is the most professional decision a pilot can make.
• Plan continuation error is your biggest enemy on a bad approach. Your brain wants to finish what it started.
• The procedure takes three seconds: full power, pitch for climb, retract flaps incrementally.
• Two or more unstabilized-approach indicators together mean the decision is already made for you.
• Practice go-arounds regularly, including from the flare and after a bounce, so the mechanics are automatic when it counts.

The go-around procedure referenced here is detailed in the FAA Airplane Flying Handbook and the Private Pilot ACS, both worth reviewing periodically.