Permission
Thank you for your generally courteous and detailed posting Moggiee.
You yourself write, "In fact, the rules of the air state that when ATC clear a crew to fly an approach, they are also giving that crew permission to fly the go-round and MAP, therefore the crew do already have permission!"
This puts in a different light the statement by an earlier contributor, about which I expressed surprise (in my posting). He had written, "No-one asks ATC for permission to go around". My suprise at his suggestion that pilots could goaround wthout permission was justified, and his statement disingenuous because they already have permission.
I would also point out again that I said nothing about ATC permission in my actual short article.
Again, no errors of fact in my article are asserted. I appear to be criticised for not writing a longer or different article which might have reassured readers at greater length than I did about go-arounds, rather than querying the absence of data on them.
As regards the person ("Jolly Roger") who writes that it is highly unlikely that the IAA did not known of all four goarounds, I simply depended on is what the IAA told me about its records. And, for the benefit of others who tell me that I should have spoken directly to Air Traffic Control, you should know that queries there are referred to the IAA for comment.
By the way, just so that it is not forgotten, what I DID write in my article was that, "The episode was "absolutely routine", according to the Irish Aviation Authority.... She said that both pilots and air traffic controllers are trained for them."
I would give no interviewee a guarantee to quote her/him at length and in full, nor an opportunity to approve my article in advance.
Might I suggest also that if someone had not had a letter accepted by the editor of any newspaper on a flight topic then they post it on PPRuNe if it is not libellous.