LHR Go-arounds 2 Nov
Yesterday ,02 Nov around 0715,I was among a group of BA engineers working a B787 in the maintenance area when an American B777 landing in foggy conditions on 27R,seemed to have had a problem and temporarily blocked the runway...this caused the following 4 aircraft to perform go-arounds......nothing unusual to see in a normal day at LHR!.
However,as engineers, we were interested in how each of the flight crews involved handled each go-around and if it would be part of thier companies operating procedures or at pilots discretion?.......The first go-around was by a BA B777,who had obviously been given a late call,as he was just over the peri track bordering the end of 27R...on initiating the climb out he immediately went "clean" with the gear and climbed away.....two subsequent aircraft,a China Southern B787 and Ethiopian A350 initiated thier go-arounds a little further out and went "clean" with the gear well into the climb out.....in amongst these was a Jet Airways? B777,who on his go-around,climbed to approx 3-4000ft,before levelling out and then retracting the gear!
Based on seeing these,could someone be kind enough to give us any insights into how as flight crew,such situations are handled?. We assume that on final approach each of the crews workload would be similar,(unless they had a problem with the a/c),with the "flying pilot" in charge of the landing etc,and it is they that would initiate and handle the "go-around",given the call, with the second pilot doing everything else?. Our assumption is also,that the flight crews would like the aircraft to be "clean" as soon as possible after initiating the climb out? In this respect,we are curious as to why the Jet Airways B777 went clean only after the go-around climb had been completed.....would this have been a flight crew decision or part of thier SOP's??.
As an aside,we know that in asking this question on this forum,we will inevitably bring out the "Heathrow disaster averted"........"shock horror aircraft forgets to land"....."send for the Daily Fail reporter" brigade,so if the more reasonable and sensible of you out there could answer our question in good faith,then we would be most interested to hear from you!