Aborted Landing - Ryanair Gatwick flight on Wednesday

[dublinamg]

Hope I'm putting this in the right place and it is allowed but think I've seen these type of queries before.

Was passenger on FR114 earlier today when the approach was aborted quite suddenly. After climbing quickly and a few turns pilot came on to say that a B747 had cut in ahead of us and we had to abort because of that. Started a new approach and landed after another 20 minutes or so. First thime I've been on a flight that aborted the landing. Always thought it would mainly be for other reasons if it happened.

Just wondering if anybody knows what was likely to have happened with this flight and roughly how often would an approach be aborted at a late stage because of something like this?

By the way got the same plane back this evening and despite us being nearly an hour late getting to the gate almost an hour late the plane made it back to Dublin bang on time tonight with one of the most entertaining Captain's i've ever heard.

[Romeo India Xray]

It sounds like the captain on your flight was putting things in lay person terms by saying that a 747 had "cut in ahead". This is far to general a term to draw a conclusion from but as flight crew, esecially in a place like LGW, we all have a pretty good idea of what each other are doing, so certainly no "boy racer" moves.

ATC work very hard to ensure that we are evenly spaced when trying to use the runway(s). Sometimes for 1 reason or another things go wrong. Two weeks ago I was at LGW when a landing AC had a birdstrike. Nothing serious, but go-arounds were a possibility for the landing aircraft and for us (departing) it meant a small delay while the bits of bird were picked up.

Certainly we dont take chances!!!

I have been fortunate in only having 2 career go-arounds, in 17 years. One of these was caused by another aircraft being given clearance to line up (on the runway) to be ready for takeoff when there was slightly too little time. I reached decission height without clearance because he was still in the runway, so I had to go-around. I guess this could have been interpreted as him "cutting in ahead" on the RW, but certainly I would use diferent terminology to make a PA.

RIX