Wow, guys, steady on there.
Although I am not one of those “professional pilots and people who work in aviation” for whom the Professional Pilots Rumour Network (PPRuNe) is said to be “a community”, I have joined it so that I may reply to the remarkable response to my 200-word article that I wrote for the Sunday Independent, Ireland’s best-read Sunday newspaper across all social classes.
That article was published on the PPRuNE website in breach of the site’s own rules about copyright (which should have the author’s permission), and a number of the anonymous postings also breach the site’s own courtesy guidelines. Some postings are also libellous of myself and of the spokeswoman for the IAA who is called a liar, but I shall ignore the cowardly libels, (especially from a compatriot who denounces passengers who raise concerns as “nervous nellies” while her/himself lacking the courage to sign what s/he writes).
A number of postings are quite kind to me, and others from experienced pilots could make the basis for an article far more sensational that the little piece that I penned. Indeed, if I wished to be sensational, I could write about inconsistent security checks, cabin doors I have seen left open during flights, a passenger taken onto the flight deck for an extended period and things that airline crews have said to me. Or about some of the concerns of certain people who wrote to me directly.
I shall ignore the abuse and attempt to clarify some points. I generally ignore anonymous reaction to what I write and wonder what it says about the industry that professional pilots and people who work in aviation feel it appropriate or necessary to express themselves anonymously or pseudonymously. That some should resort to infantile language similar to that deployed by graffiti artists on toilet walls is simply bizarre.
I have been flying for nearly forty years. The short item was not intended to be sensationalist but to highlight the fact that no coherent record of such go-arounds are kept. I believe that the article accurately described my experience. It in no way criticised the pilot, who was highly professional and I was relieved in the circumstances to be flying Aer Lingus (even if it took over an hour after boarding to get a cup of coffee).
There may well be another article entitled, "Ever wondered what happens when an airliner goes around?" (as someone suggests) but it would be nice to know first why the industry and its regulators appear to keep no coherent record of why or how often pilots actually do go-around.
By the way, I find the term “go-around” Orwellian. If this term referred to the sort of stacking one used to experience over places like JFK, due to congestion, then I could accept it. Using it to describe evasive action or an aborted approach/landing is to use it as a euphemism it seems to me.
Some respondents on the site, and others directly to my email address at DCU, seemed to feel that I was putting pressure on pilots not to “go-around”, and that this reflected growing commercial pressures on pilots. I completely support pilots who decide to make go-arounds” in the interest of safety. As one of you put it, “Rather a Go-Around every day, a few mins delay, than be part of an accident.” The conspiracy theorist who felt that I was trying to be pro-Ryanair and anti-Aer Lingus was simply wrong.
A remarkable feature of quite a number of responses is that they imply a lack of research or factual accuracy and assert low journalistic standards but they do not say how exactly the article errs. My own deduction is that what the extraordinary response shows is a great unease in the sector about go-arounds, for reasons that have nothing to do with my article.
One UK contributor writes, “I maintain that the word "slammed" is unnecessary. Did they "slam" up on the original take-off?”. All I can say is that is what it sounded like to me, and certainly stronger than the normal sound of wheels going up. I was seated over the wings, about three rows back from the emergency exits. Indeed, one contributor from “The Med” acknowledges that, “The first and second sentences are factual the gear doors and struts can sound very much like a door being slammed if you are sitting in certain seats.”
The same UK contributor asks, “Was his first thought about a flock of birds...or did that idea come to him on the ground when he was writing his piece?”. The first thought that came to me was a near miss or a flight on the ground (as happened me thirty years ago with a go-around at JFK which was decidedly scarier). But as we rose quickly this month I did wonder about the knock-on dangers of a sudden evasive move, including a flock of birds in the cloudy flight-path.
A “Roy Hudd” from Crawley writes, “No-one asks ATC for permission to go around, the aircraft does not continue to accelerate in the early stages of climb (<1500ft), and in the landing gear does not slam into the wheelbays, no matter how firmly PNF may pull the lever up!”. I did not say that ATC is asked for permission to go-around, but that some go-arounds are directed by ATC. However, as a layperson, I find the suggestion here that a pilot could go-around without permission to be quite startling. I wrote in the article, “we flew faster and faster, banking right and disappearing back into cloud”, which we did. The flying faster and faster may have preceded the actual climb stage. And it certainly sounded like a slam to me.
“Rick Studder” from “Europe” writes, “The article illustrates the need for some kind of public education with regards to go-arounds. Maybe it should be included in an FAQ in the inflight magazine.” That would make a pleasant and interesting change from much of the commercialised rubbish in such publications. But it would require the airline industry to reverse if standard policy of treating people like mushrooms. The stress of contemporary travel, not least at Dublin airport, is likely to increase the number of nervous nellies who wonder just how under sober control the whole rapidly growing airline business is.
Some people criticise me for not being a professional aviation journalist/specialist. Well, that is what I am not, but a cat may look at a queen. In any event, I have formed the view that some specialist journalists (for example, in property or motoring or agriculture) can get far too cosy with their sector for the public’s good. Wetting yourself about the latest Boeing jet is not every reader’s idea of the most relevant story.
Oddly, it seems to me, one thing no respondent appears to have done is to have actually addressed the point of the article, namely the absence of clear and agreed published data on the number of go-arounds and the reasons for them. With modern computers, this should be easy and would surely tell us just how routine they and the reasons for them are at various airports.
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