PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - Safe height to go around?
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Old 1st May 2008, 05:37
  #36 (permalink)  
SNS3Guppy
 
Join Date: Oct 2005
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Now certainly yes, there are exceptional times when going around isn't a wise idea, and you've cited some of them. An engine-out approach in a light twin, for example; you're better off in most cases landing in the grass alongside the runway if you have to than trying to take it around on one engine.

An engine-out in a single is another obvious one.

Flaps stuck at 40 in your Cessna 150, probably not your best bet. Yes, rare circumstances can occur in which you can't go around, but they are rare.

I once had three deer materialize out of nowhere at a dead run on the runway as I was preparing to land a J-3 cub. I pushed up the power, the engine failed, and I went back to landing again. It does happen. Again, just not that often.

I've used airstrips in box canyons and other such locations which were true one-way strips; land one direction, take off the other, no possibility of a go-around. Again, exceptional circumstances, not at all the norm.

One more good reason, among many, to land where one is supposed to on the runway; landing far down the runway eliminates valueable stopping or "going" distance, and limits one's options.

This also highlights one of the important reasons why it's often best to continue a takeoff when one has a problem than to reject at high speed. When one rejects, one is tryin to lose energy with much of the runway behind, and to manage the airplane from a position of accelerating faster and faster, to trying to stop. Conversely, when one elects to live with the problem, take it airborne, and come back for a landing, one has several big advantages working in one's favor. Chief among those is the opportunity to take the time to work the situation out. It also gives one the opportunity to have the full runway ahead, instead of behind, and to approach the landing from a stable, controlled, slowing condition, better configured to stop.

This should be kept in mind when deciding whether to reject the landing and go airborne again. When one elects to go-around from on the runway, one already has energy and speed in one's favor. it's not at all the same as trying to accelerate from a dead stop during a takeoff; one is already going fast.

One should have done ample touch and go's (bumps and circuits in the UK, I believe) by the time one gains one's certification that it's second nature.
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