Missed Approaches
 

Having watched a couple of missed approaches at Gatwick yesterday, both due to departing aircraft being a bit slow getting away, I was wondering about the consequences.
Presumably there will be some grumbling about the extra fuel used, delays to arrival etc.
I wondered if there was some sort of formal investigation, possibly to point fingers and, if there was such an investigation, then does the party found to have been responsible have to stump up the additional costs that the go-around aircraft must incur? In today's world, someone has to be responsible for everything, no such thing as "stuff happens" so would the offending company (operator of the slow departure aircraft) try to offload the responsibility onto ATC, claiming they shouldn't have cleared the inbound aircraft to land before their aircraft was at least rolling?
Kelvin

From the ATC side, the details will be recorded (reason, weather, aircraft ahead etc etc) for data collection in order to identify trends.

This will then throw up things such as one airline may be having a few more missed approaches than average due to unstabilised approaches, or a certain new airline is causing more than its fair share of go-arounds due to runway occupancy. We will then go and talk with the idenitified airlines to discuss the issues with them and that will hopefully result in an improvement, which might be a better appreciation for high intensity runway ops, or perhaps a small tweak in airline SOPs.

For a standard mised approach, where nothing else happened, then there will not be any more done in terms of investigation.

It's worth bearing in mind that the reasons for missed approaches at Gatwick will vary somewhat from those at Heathrow, for example. In the latter case, it's more likely to be the preceding landing aircraft being late to clear the runway than an aircraft slow to get airborne (though of course that can happen too at Gatwick with consecutive landing movements). Other reasons for GAs such as unstabilised approaches obviously apply to both mixed-mode and segregated operations.

As it happens, both LGW and LHR have recently published GA stats for 2015: Gatwick had 520 from 134K landings and Heathrow 591 from 237K arrivals.

<< try to offload the responsibility onto ATC, claiming they shouldn't have cleared the inbound aircraft to land before their aircraft was at least rolling?>>

Never going to happen.

I wasn't referring to LHR, I was using the 'runway occupancy' phrase in terms of departures, to which it applies as much as arrivals. Any moderately busy airport will be recording the same data and identifying both potential safety and service delivery trends.

However, we need to be careful when ascribing reasons for a missed approach: For example, if it's due to an arriving aircraft still being on the runway, this can be due to a number of reasons; one of which is a 'late to clear/slow to vacate'. It could be the spacing was poor, it could be that the lead a/c reduced speed too early, or the follower didn't reduce speed very quickly at all, or the lead was unusually light and/or the follower was unusually heavy, or the runway was wet, or the aircraft floated and landed long (which itself can have many causes).

Thanks all for the replies.
Dave, in both cases, I was at the departure end of the runway and watched a static tail at the end of the runway and the approaching aircraft getting closer until the landings were aborted so, no doubt re the causes. Incidentally, I have seen a number of these at Gatwick recently and they all involved an aircraft still on the runway, some going around sooner than others.
I still wonder though, who will pick up the tab for the extra fuel used?

Putting it simply the airline owning the airframe that went around, fundamentally on the principle that it's aviation, these things happen and in any event tomorrow the shoe/go-around might be on the other foot.

From airframe drivers POV Go-arounds can happen for a whole host of reasons ( and some events do actually require a go-around). If you do one a pilot's report is filed through head office...and that's probably the end of the story, though Flight Data Recorder/Quick Access recorder trace will always get looked at/analysed to make sure all went OK once the decision to go-around was made....

Companies do try to detect trends, so if there was a high go-around rate at a particular airport no doubt more research would be done to find out why....but management are not going to chase ATC (and the other operator involved, if there is one) over every single discontinued approach.

Kelvin, if airlines tried to pass the bill on to ATC, the immediate outcome would be significantly increased spacing, reduced movement rate, heavy delays on the ground and in the air (extended holding time), and ultimately burning off more fuel. I think most airline accountants will settle for the odd GA. ;)

By a strange co-incidence, there is now a new ATS provider at Gatwick although some of the NATS staff did stay on. Any connection I wonder?
The NATS controllers at Gatwick were superb at managing runway occupancy; I was on a fam flight one day travelling on the flight deck, inside 4nm the tower controller got 2 departures away before we were cleared to land.