Safe height to go around?

[Chuck Ellsworth]

Well, chuck, I'm sitting in Liege waiting out my rest time before continuing on around the world...neither the company, nor myself feels I should quit. Seems I just keep on passing those pesky checkrides, and here I am flying professionally. You?

Actually I retired about two years ago having spent most of my life flying. I decided that when I turned 70 it was time to retire from flying and enjoy what ever years I have left doing things I never had the time to do when I was in the flying business....

.....if nothing else I can look back on an accident free career with no violations against my licenses.

Does that answer your " and you " question?




How about you mind your own business.

This is an open forum for people to comment on and I find your experiences to be rather interesting SNS3Guppy.



You rise up every once in a while with a little vitriol to swat down...are you somehow threatened by other participants here...does it tip your throne, or something?

Not in the least, what you percieve to be vitriol I see to be a sense of wonder at all your adventures and I also am thankful that I missed a lot of that exciting stuff.

[bjornhall]

Just read yet another, fairly standard accident report of the "it's not too late to go around" variety...

When the decision to abort the landing was made, there was insufficient distance remaining for the aircraft to accelerate to lift-off speed. A perception of sufficient airspeed due to the high groundspeed may have been a factor. The aircraft went over the embankment in an aerodynamically stalled condition with the nose gear retracting and the main gear still extended but unlocked.

(my bold)

As so often in these cases, no amount of number crunching would have done them any good whatsoever, since the numbers they would use would not be the right ones (but checking the windsock to note the tailwind would have been good). However, had they accepted the overrun rather than trying to make a late go-around, they'd both be alive.

I think this thread has overlooked lack of situational awareness as a cause of whatever puts you in the situation of having to decide whether to stop or go. "You shouldn't have lost it in the first place" or "by comparing the data from ten differerent POH tables with some guesswork and a few pages of calculations we can easily tell that..." are equally useless by then. However, "hitting a tree hurts less at 16 kts on the ground than at 60 kts and 30 ft up" remains valid.

http://www.tsb.gc.ca/en/reports/air/...6/a06p0036.asp

[Chilli Monster]

Originally Posted by SNS3 Guppy

Is it your attention span or reading comprehension that is lacking, here?

Ahh, the personal attack. Well known retort by someone who's backed into a corner and losing.

Having read both your original answer and the thread preceeding it several times over (I refer you to my original point regarding the difference between "decision" and "commital" and what may be the better option after commital) may I suggest it's not my comprehension that's at fault here?

[kevmusic]

Some really late go-arounds here - and some approaches that should have been!

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=nmkX8Z...eature=related

[fireflybob]

However, "hitting a tree hurts less at 16 kts on the ground than at 60 kts and 30 ft up" remains valid.

Exactly! Kinetic energy varies with the SQUARE of the speed so if you double the speed you quadruple the energy that has to be dissipated!

As my dad used to tell me with respect to forced landing without power - better to hit the far hedge at taxi speed rather than the near hedge at flying speed!

[SNS3Guppy]

Ahh, the personal attack. Well known retort by someone who's backed into a corner and losing.

Perhaps that's your problem here. You percieve the discussion as a contest. You feel free to do all the winning you like.

One should never be unprepared to go around, whether at 300' on the visual approach to a long runway, or once on the ground. What exactly one does at any given point will depend on the specific circumstances as they play out in real time.

By all means, place that in your crack pipe, and smoke it.

[Piper.Classique]

One should never be unprepared to go around, whether at 300' on the visual approach to a long runway, or once on the ground. What exactly one does at any given point will depend on the specific circumstances as they play out in real time.

It looks to me like we have changed the emphasis here from a height to go-around to a 'distance remaining' to go-around. Assuming that the data is available, yes this can be calculated. What can't be calculated at a strange airfield is how far along the runway you are at any given point in the landing. I am trying to remember where it was that I saw distance marker boards at the 25, 50, and 75 percent points of the runway. useful thing, that. As I recall it wasn't a particularly short runway. In any case, the 'mobile' obstruction is rather a different case to the landing that goes sour or the too high/hot approach.
It would be nice to always have a runway long enough to stop and take off again but in the real world we don't always have that.
I know this is a private pilot's forum, but it isn't necessary to assume that we are all incompetent and can't do landing and take-off distance calculations. I once spent a hot afternoon on a private strip amusing myself calculating the distances required for the club fleet on a fly in (short strip with a fairly steep slope over the centre third, quite flat at the approach end, then the slope up, and less slope for about the last third). Land uphill (downwind on that day), take-off downhill. Not many handbooks give all the data you need for that sort of situation. Quite a nice place to fly from with the right sort of aeroplane. Our club instructor was having a hard time converting the club pilots to the use of a oneway strip. I finally came up after a lot of interpolation and some use of the imagination with a distance to clear 15 metres after safety factors, that looked a good deal shorter than the poor little robin was actually achieving over the trees at the end of the strip.

Ok, to get back to my point. he was in a no go-around possible situation on landing once he was down to the flare at the earliest possible touch-down point, as the slope exceeded his maximum angle of climb. If he landed long, and touched down on the rather gentle up slope at the far end he could probably have climbed away, as the climb out path beyond the end of the runway was fairly clear. I was flying a different aircraft that flew slower, could approach a good deal steeper over the obstacles on approach, and had the power weight ratio to allow a climb even up the slope. Same distance available in both cases.
So shall we quit the sniping and get back to encouraging people to use their brains and think about what they are doing, at the airfied they are at, in the aircraft they fly?