"Uh...negative, Tower...going around" - lesson learned

Good post, and thanks for sharing a lesson learned. I'm at about the same number of hours. I had to go around once when I was at about 70 hours. I was returning from a cross country and my heading was west towards the airport. The tower cleared me for runway 28. Well, being a new pilot I forgot to check the weather and just assumed the tower knew what was best for me. I learned afterwards that the winds were 090 at 12 knots. I knew it fealt like I was covering ground really fast on approach and when I touched down I landed flat. The front wheel, which is a castering wheel, made some nasty ratcheting noise. I porpoised and hit the front wheel again. Could I have salvaged this landing? Maybe, but luckily I was wise enough to suck it up and go around. (BTW, my wife was riding with me and it was the first cross country I brought her on, so I was dealing with some humiliation :o). So, red-faced, I went back around and gave it another try. And I still hadn't figured out that I should be asking for a different runway. But I was able to get it down on the next try. This could have been a bad situation for me, but I learned a valuable lesson from it.
 
Excellent post and thanks for the story. I was jumpseating with a United Airbus crew the other day and he related a story after he moved from the right seat of the 777 to the bus, and had to go around in RNO for being too high and hot. You only have to land once you've landed!
 
Good post.

I remember the first time I had to do a short approach in a Baron, it was shortly after I started flying it and was still learning things. I was doing something like 180 kts and about crapped myself when they asked me. But after a while, I got used to it. I flew in and out of class B all the time, and usually if I would accept a short approach I could get in ahead of the airliners.

Aviation is a great thing. Always something new to learn, and always the opportunity to get a bit of sweat on your brow.
 
Good decision. My very first solo i went around with some pretty good crosswind gusts, and since then only 1 other time, because of personnel on the runway that the briefer and approach failed to inform us. One of the coolest things in aviation is seeing an airliner going around
 
gatorbuc99 said:
. One of the coolest things in aviation is seeing an airliner going around
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Ok. If you come down to where I am, there's airliners in the VFR pattern often. Low approaches, touch and goes....you can see them go around to your hearts content here. :)
 
Great post Killbilly. I have had to go around before twice on my own accord just because I was uncomfortable with the way I set things up. I was worried about traffic and a student would had the plane next, tried to rush things and realized it wasn't going to work out.
 
Orange Anchor said:
Accidents and incidents usually follow a slow evolution. We respond fairly well to red lights and horns but the other stuff. It can sneak up on us. At some point when you see you are having to continually patch your solution to make it work, as you so wisely have posted, GO AROUND. It's okay.

Well done.
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:yeahthat:

Our brain is set up to do a lot of thinking. These scenarios of having to come up with a solution with an inflight problem is nearly impossible to resist. Our brains can't think out of a high and fast jam and our brains also have a problem determining the point of no return. That is a VERY BAD mixture.
 
gatorbuc99 said:
Good decision. My very first solo i went around with some pretty good crosswind gusts, and since then only 1 other time, because of personnel on the runway that the briefer and approach failed to inform us. One of the coolest things in aviation is seeing an airliner going around
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saw a 767 do it for a citation... man that must have been a lot of fuel.
 
There's no shame at all in going around... at any experience level. I've got somewhere around 900TT, 400TT this year alone, but I still did a go around a couple months back.

I was flying an IAP in hard actual, hadn't flown one myself in awhile and broke out a bit fast and high. Could I have made the runway? Yeah, probably, but it really wasn't worth the risk of running off the end when I could just go missed and try it again. Took it around, set it up much better and planted it right in the landing zone on the second try.

Hopefully my student that was with me took a good lesson from seeing that even the CFI needs to go-around sometimes.
 
floridaCFII said:
There's no shame at all in going around... at any experience level. I've got somewhere around 900TT, 400TT this year alone, but I still did a go around a couple months back.

I was flying an IAP in hard actual, hadn't flown one myself in awhile and broke out a bit fast and high. Could I have made the runway? Yeah, probably, but it really wasn't worth the risk of running off the end when I could just go missed and try it again. Took it around, set it up much better and planted it right in the landing zone on the second try.

Hopefully my student that was with me took a good lesson from seeing that even the CFI needs to go-around sometimes.
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That works good. There's also the option to stop at circling MDA and circle, if not in a position to land, and if the approach allows for it; or even climb to circling MDA and do the same, again if the approach allows for it. You can circle to the same runway if you like too. If that isn't a comfortable transition, then missed is an equally viable option.
 
falconvalley said:
:yeahthat:

Our brain is set up to do a lot of thinking. These scenarios of having to come up with a solution with an inflight problem is nearly impossible to resist. Our brains can't think out of a high and fast jam and our brains also have a problem determining the point of no return. That is a VERY BAD mixture.
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And we 'satisfice' (adequate.. not optimum or best). We don't look for the BEST solution but generally accept the FIRST solution that seems to work. It's like no one continues searching for their car keys after they find them. :nana2:
 
MikeD said:
That works good. There's also the option to stop at circling MDA and circle, if not in a position to land, and if the approach allows for it; or even climb to circling MDA and do the same, again if the approach allows for it. You can circle to the same runway if you like too. If that isn't a comfortable transition, then missed is an equally viable option.
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Yeah... that would be my normal solution. This particular day the weather was right at the straight-in mins and about 150ft below the circling mins for this particular non-precision approach. To make things even better, that was the one day in 4 years the ILS broke :D
 
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