The Stabilized Approach, the Go-Around You Talked Yourself Out Of, and the Decision Habit That Separates Good Outcomes from NTSB Reports

Most pilots who have landed gear-up, long, or hard were not surprised by their approach - they just kept going anyway. The go-around decision is not a stick-and-rudder problem. It is a judgment problem, and understanding why your brain resists the correct call is the first step to making it reliably.

What Is a Stabilized Approach and Where Did the Standard Come From?

Airlines began codifying stabilized approach criteria into standard operating procedures in the 1980s and 1990s. Accident investigators kept finding the same thread running through runway excursions, hard landings, and undershoot accidents: the approach was not stable, and the crew did not go around.

For Part 121 airline operations, the criteria are specific. By 1,000 feet above field elevation in instrument conditions, or 500 feet in visual conditions, the aircraft must be on centerline, on glidepath, properly configured, at target airspeed, and descending at a stable rate. Any box unchecked means a mandatory go-around - no exceptions.

General aviation carries no equivalent regulation. The Airman Certification Standards (ACS) requires you to demonstrate a go-around, but no Federal Aviation Regulation specifies a gate that legally compels a private pilot to discontinue an approach. That judgment belongs entirely to you.

Why Do Pilots Keep Going When They Shouldn’t?

There is a concept in human factors research called plan continuation bias - the tendency to press forward with a plan in the face of information that should change it. You briefed the approach, flew the pattern, and the runway is in sight. The brain wants to finish what it started, and it will rationalize what it needs to.

Speed a little high? I’ll bleed it off in the flare. Drifted left of centerline? I’ll correct on rollout. Sink rate steeper than planned? I’ll add a touch of power. Each micro-adjustment is individually defensible. What the brain does not calculate easily is the compounding effect of all three happening simultaneously inside the final 200 feet, with zero margin remaining.

The Flight Safety Foundation has documented this pattern consistently: the majority of runway excursion and hard landing accidents were preceded by unstabilized approaches, and in a significant portion of those, the pilot had the opportunity to go around and did not. Plan continuation bias is not a beginner mistake - studies have recorded it in crews with thousands of hours. Experience alone does not make you immune to it.

How Plan Continuation Bias Starts Before You Even Turn Final

Consider this scenario: you have been weather-delayed for two days in Knoxville. The system has passed and you are 45 minutes from home, fuel nominal, last leg of the trip. ATIS reports winds gusting 18 to 25 knots, variable direction. On final, airspeed is oscillating between 68 and 76 knots in the gusts when your target is 72. The picture is not steady.

The trap is not the approach itself. Plan continuation bias did not start at 500 feet - it started the moment you filed for home after two days on the ground. The investment in finishing, the relief of familiar terrain, the desire to be done: all of that is in the cockpit with you, and all of it is pushing you toward the runway.

The correct call is a go-around. Not necessarily because the approach is unlandable, but because speed instability in gusts has not resolved, and below 500 feet is not the altitude at which to start solving it. A second circuit lets you observe what the wind is actually doing to your track. You arrive at the numbers with a stable picture and land - that is aeronautical decision making at its best.

Is a Go-Around a Failure?

No. This framing gets absorbed in training without anyone ever stating it directly, and over a flying career it becomes dangerous. Every student go-around implies a re-do: the airplane repositioned, the pattern re-flown, time and fuel spent. The message received is that going around means you did not get it right the first time.

A go-around is a decision. It means you recognized that conditions no longer match the standard you set before flying the approach, and you acted on that recognition. That is precisely the aeronautical decision making the ACS is trying to build in you.

When you feel the pull to keep going even though the picture is not right, naming that pull gives you something to push back against. That is the go-around I need to make right now. Then you make it.

How to Build the Go-Around Habit Before the Approach Starts

The most effective tool is the go-around gate - a specific, stated decision point established before you ever fly the approach. Not a vague intention, but a concrete threshold:

• If I am not configured and on speed by 500 feet, I am going around.
• If airspeed is more than 5 knots above target at 200 feet, I am going around.
• If I am not on centerline by the threshold, I am going around.

The specific numbers matter less than their specificity. When the gate is defined before the approach begins, the in-the-moment judgment call is removed. The brain does not have to weigh the pressure of finishing against the voice telling it something is wrong. The gate either opens or it does not.

Most pilots associate personal minimums with weather - crosswind limits, ceiling limits. Personal minimums for approach quality are equally important and far fewer private pilots have sat down and thought them through. Write yours down. Put them on a kneeboard card. Having them in writing makes them real in a way that vague intentions are not.

What to Practice in Training to Make This Automatic

Standard training develops the salvage reflex: the CFI puts you high and fast, then watches whether you can get it back. That builds stick-and-rudder skill. It also trains the brain that the salvage is always the correct response.

Balance that work with sessions where the explicit goal is recognition and execution, not recovery. Tell your CFI you want to practice go-arounds from intentionally compromised positions - high and fast, off-centerline, unstabilized at 300 feet. The goal is not to salvage it. The goal is to feel the moment the picture stops matching your gate and immediately execute the go-around without hesitation.

This matters on your practical test. When a scenario leads to an unstabilized approach, the examiner is not necessarily expecting a landing. A prompt, clean go-around demonstrates judgment. A salvaged landing demonstrates stick-and-rudder skill. The ACS values both - but over a fifty-year flying career, judgment is what keeps you flying.

What About the Radio Call?

At a towered airport, a go-around requires a radio call. At a non-towered airport, announce your intentions on the CTAF. Some pilots have admitted to continuing poor approaches partly because they did not want to make the call - embarrassed to let the tower know they did not get it the first time.

No controller, anywhere, has ever thought less of a pilot for going around. What a controller sees is a pilot who recognized a situation and took the correct action. That is the whole story. There is nothing to explain.

Key Takeaways

• Airlines mandated stabilized approach criteria at 1,000 feet (IMC) or 500 feet (VMC) after decades of accident data pointed to the same pattern: unstabilized approaches that crews did not abandon.
• Plan continuation bias is a documented human cognitive pattern - not a beginner mistake. It affects experienced pilots and begins building long before short final.
• A go-around is a decision, not a failure. It reflects the judgment the ACS is specifically designed to develop.
• Set a go-around gate before every approach - a specific, stated threshold that removes in-the-moment rationalization.
• Train for recognition, not just recovery. Practice go-arounds from compromised positions with the explicit goal of executing, not salvaging.