Quick Facts
What Is a Go-Around?	Aborting a landing and climbing away to attempt another approach
Decision Window	3–5 seconds at most
How Common?	Airlines: ~1–3 per 1,000 approaches; GA: higher but underreported
Fatal Factor	Failure to go around is a leading cause of approach-and-landing accidents
Psychology	“Plan continuation bias” — the urge to finish what you started

You’re 200 feet above the runway. The approach doesn’t feel right. The airspeed is too high, the crosswind is shoving the nose sideways, or you’ve floated past the touchdown zone and the remaining runway is shrinking fast. Every training manual, every instructor, every accident report says the same thing: go around. Push the throttle forward, climb away, try again.

And yet pilots don’t. Not nearly often enough. The go-around is the safest manoeuvre in aviation — and it’s the one pilots resist most.

The Psychology of Pressing On

Psychologists call it plan continuation bias. Once the brain commits to a course of action — in this case, landing the aircraft — it resists abandoning that plan even when the evidence says it should. The closer you are to completing the task, the harder it is to pull away. At 200 feet on short final, the brain has already “landed” the aircraft. The physical act is just a formality. Interrupting that sequence feels wrong, even when it’s the only right thing to do.

There’s also social pressure. In the airline world, a go-around means passengers feel the engines surge, the nose pitch up, and the ground fall away when they expected to be taxiing to a gate. It triggers questions from cabin crew, an explanation to dispatch, and additional fuel burn that someone will notice. None of these are reasons not to go around — but they’re friction. And in the three seconds a pilot has to make the decision, friction wins more often than it should.

In general aviation, the pressure is different but equally powerful. The private pilot who’s flown three hours to reach a destination doesn’t want to divert. The student pilot doesn’t want to admit the approach went bad. The weekend pilot with passengers doesn’t want to look uncertain. The go-around feels like failure, even though it’s the most professional decision a pilot can make.

What the Data Shows

The Flight Safety Foundation conducted a landmark study that found approach-and-landing accidents are the single largest category of fatal accidents in commercial aviation. Of those, a significant percentage involved a situation where a go-around should have been initiated but wasn’t. The aircraft was unstabilised — too fast, too high, not configured — and the crew continued to a landing that ended in a runway excursion, a hard landing, or worse.

Airlines typically see one to three go-arounds per thousand approaches. That sounds low, but consider that an unstabilised approach rate — situations where a go-around is warranted by standard operating procedures — runs significantly higher. The gap between “should have gone around” and “actually went around” represents pilots who pressed on when they shouldn’t have.

In general aviation, the numbers are harder to pin down because go-arounds aren’t systematically recorded. But the accident reports tell a consistent story: pilots who ran off the end of a runway, who hit approach lights, who ground-looped in a crosswind — pilots who would be alive if they’d added power and gone around instead.

How to Make It Automatic

The best pilots don’t make the go-around a decision. They make it a reflex. The technique is simple: brief the approach with the assumption that you will go around, and only continue to land if everything looks right. Invert the default. The go-around is the plan. Landing is the exception.

Airlines have adopted stabilised approach criteria — firm gates that define what the approach must look like at specific altitudes. If the airspeed is more than 10 knots above reference, go around. If the aircraft isn’t configured for landing by 1,000 feet, go around. If the sink rate exceeds 1,000 feet per minute below 500 feet, go around. No discussion. No judgment call. The criteria are met, or the approach is abandoned.

For private pilots, the principle is the same even without formal gates. Set personal minimums: if the approach doesn’t look right by a certain point, go around. Practice the manoeuvre regularly so the muscle memory is there when the adrenaline is running. And remember the fundamental truth that every flight instructor repeats and every accident investigator confirms: a go-around has never killed anyone. Pressing on has killed thousands.

Three Seconds That Save Lives

The go-around takes three seconds to initiate. Throttle forward. Establish a positive climb. Clean up the aircraft. In those three seconds, you buy yourself altitude, airspeed and options — the three things that keep pilots alive. In those three seconds, you transform a deteriorating situation into a controlled one.

The runway will still be there when you come back around. The approach that went wrong can be flown again from a position of strength. The passengers will be fine. The fuel is there. The only thing you lose is the illusion that landing on the first attempt matters.

It doesn’t. Getting home matters. And the go-around is how you guarantee it.

Sources: Flight Safety Foundation, BoldMethod, FAA Safety Briefing