There is no safer manoeuvre in aviation than a go-around. The data is clear. The accidents prevented by a go-around vastly outnumber any accidents caused by performing one. And yet, pilots worldwide resist it with a stubbornness that baffles anyone looking at the numbers.

A go-around sounds simple: if your approach isn’t stable, abandon the landing and climb back to altitude for another try. That’s it. But the human element makes it complex. When a pilot is committed to a landing, actually executing a go-around means overriding months of momentum, decisions, and expectations. It means telling air traffic control, your passengers, your scheduling officer, and your own pride that something isn’t right.

The cost of not going around is occasionally catastrophic. The cost of going around is always just a few extra minutes and some fuel. And yet, every year, pilots land in conditions they should have waved off.

What a Go-Around Actually Is

A go-around isn’t an emergency procedure. It’s a normal part of flying. It’s the procedure you practice in flight training, execute safely hundreds of times in a career, and should do whenever your approach doesn’t meet your landing criteria. The mechanics are straightforward: apply full power, establish a positive rate of climb, retract the landing gear, clean up the flaps progressively, and climb to a safe altitude.

The decision to execute a go-around can be made by the pilot flying, the pilot monitoring, air traffic control, or (in some airlines) even by a system like a terrain awareness warning system. It doesn’t require a malfunction. Weather changing unexpectedly. Another aircraft not vacating the runway. An unstable approach. A medical emergency on board. A flock of birds. In airline operations, a go-around is not a sign of failure. It’s a sign that procedures are working.

The Psychology of Plan Continuation Bias

You’ve planned this flight for months. You’ve filed the flight plan, done the weight and balance, briefed the approach, coordinated with approach control, been vectored by ATC, descended through clouds, and broken out. You’re on final approach with the runway in sight. Twelve thousand pounds of fuel burned. Every decision that got you here feels like it was right.

And now something is slightly off. The wind shifted. The ceiling is lower than reported. The descent is shallower than it should be. Nothing is wrong, exactly. But nothing is quite right either.

This is the moment when plan continuation bias takes over. It’s not a willful choice. It’s a cognitive bias as powerful as any in psychology. You’ve committed to a plan — getting to this airport, landing on this runway, on this approach. Your brain has invested in that plan. Abandoning it feels like a loss. The brain naturally resists loss. So pilots rationalize. “I can steepen this descent a bit more.” “The wind might calm down.” “The runway is long enough if I need to use most of it.”

And the farther down the approach you go, the stronger this bias becomes. At 2,000 feet, a go-around feels inconvenient. At 500 feet, it feels embarrassing. At 200 feet, it feels desperate. But the safety threshold doesn’t change. Unstable at 200 feet is still unstable at 200 feet.

Professional pilots call this “get-there-itis” — the deep human urge to complete the mission once you’ve started it. It’s probably saved humanity in a thousand contexts. It’s also killed pilots.

When Failing to Go Around Ended in Disaster

Asiana Airlines Flight 214, July 2013. Boeing 777 on approach to San Francisco. The pilots had disabled the autothrottle incorrectly, and the aircraft descended into a shallower glide slope than required. At 1,500 feet, they should have recognized an unstable approach. They didn’t. At 500 feet, the stabilization criteria for continuing approach were clearly violated. They continued anyway. The aircraft struck the seawall short of the runway, killing three passengers and injuring dozens. The investigation concluded that a go-around at any point after 1,500 feet would have prevented the accident entirely.

Turkish Airlines Flight 1951, February 2009. Boeing 737 approaching Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam during poor weather. The instrument landing system (ILS) wasn’t functioning properly, giving inaccurate glide slope information. The pilots should have gone around when their altitude didn’t match the runway configuration they saw. They descended anyway, struck the ground 1 km short of the runway, and killed nine of the 135 people on board. A go-around when the picture didn’t match the plan would have prevented this entirely.

These aren’t anomalies. They’re warnings. And they keep occurring because the bias is genuinely difficult to overcome.

The Statistics That Explain Why We Still Hesitate

Here’s the thing that surprises everyone: major air carriers execute go-arounds at a rate of roughly 0.5 to 1.5 per thousand approaches. That sounds low until you think about the absolute numbers. The United States alone has about 40,000 commercial flights per day. At 1 go-around per thousand approaches, that’s 40 go-arounds per day in the US alone. Multiply that globally. Most go-arounds are uneventful. Weather changes. Another aircraft doesn’t vacate. A go-around is executed, altitude is regained, and the next approach is stable.

General aviation go-around rates are much harder to quantify because general aviation doesn’t report every approach. But accident data tells the story. In accident investigations, “failed to go-around” or “continued unstable approach” appears in the probable cause section far too often.

The cost-benefit analysis is staggering. A typical go-around for a commercial flight costs a few hundred dollars in fuel and reserves crew duty time, delaying arrival by maybe 15 minutes. A crash from a go-around that wasn’t executed costs hundreds of millions of dollars and lives that can’t be recovered.

How Training Is Evolving to Build the Courage to Wave Off

Modern airline training has fundamentally changed in the last decade. Go-around scenarios are no longer an occasional training event. They’re integrated into nearly every simulator session. Not just go-arounds, but go-arounds from uncomfortable situations. Go-arounds at 300 feet when the landing seemed assured. Go-arounds when air traffic control said “clear to land” but something felt wrong.

The goal isn’t to teach pilots how to go around — they all know that. The goal is to recalibrate their instinctive response to uncertainty. If enough of a pilot’s training has been spent waving off unstable approaches, then on the line, waving off becomes the automatic response, not the desperate exception.

Some airlines have even changed their policies on how go-arounds are discussed in debriefs. Instead of asking “why did the pilot go around?” (implying it was questionable), they ask “did the pilot go around when they should have?” (implying it might have been overdue). The language matters. Culture matters.

In general aviation, where training is more variable, organizations like the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association and local flight schools are pushing harder on go-around scenarios. The FAA’s proficiency standards for instrument-rated pilots now explicitly include go-around manoeuvres under various weather and wind conditions.

The Moment That Changes Everything

Every professional pilot has a moment when the go-around clicked. Maybe it was a near-miss on approach that forced a wave-off. Maybe it was a simulator session where the instructor threw in an equipment failure on short final. Or maybe it was just the hundredth time executing a go-around in training, when it stopped feeling like an emergency and started feeling normal.

After that moment, the decision becomes easier. You’re not overriding plan continuation bias with willpower. You’re overriding it with habit. And habit is stronger than bias.

The safest pilots aren’t those who never encounter unstable approaches. They’re the ones who recognize instability and have trained so thoroughly on the go-around response that the decision feels automatic. Not reckless. Not conservative. Just clear.

Sources: National Transportation Safety Board accident reports (Asiana 214, Turkish Airlines 1951), FAA Advisory Circular AC 120-71B on stabilized approach procedures, aircraft manufacturer flight training manuals, cognitive bias research in aviation decision-making, ICAO Annex 6 operational standards