Missed Approaches - reasons

On Saturday afternoon, I watched as a 747 (Air China?) flew over my neck of the woods, a few miles off the approach path to runway 22 at JFK. Clearly, it was flying in an atypical direction for an approach. Flaps and gear were down and it passed overhead at around 2,500 ft, before I lost sight of it.

I checked later on, using Passur, and sure enough, it was flying a missed approach. On the first pass, it got within a few miles of the airport before breaking out of the pattern and hooking a sweeping left turn (when I saw it). It went east and rejoined the pattern further out over Nassau. At that point it continued back to JFK, apparently, uneventfully.

So my question is, what might be the reasons for a missed approach. Would it be something as simple as lack of proper separation to aircraft ahead? How often do missed approaches happen these days?

The ran out of Colombian coffee and the pilot got pissed and waited for a new pot. If he had made the landing, the thump would have ejected the water out of the filter at a faster rate and taste would have been compromised. The Missed approach is not to be used unless absolutely necessary and in cases like this, there is a lot of paperwork for the stewardess. To many write-ups can lead to them loading honey-carts for 2 weeks. This is Serious business and they need Serious coffee. The crew wished it was a separation issue!

Missed approaches can happen for MANY reasons. Maybe they were on a visual approach and they weren't lined up too well. Maybe there was another aircraft that didn't clear the runway. Maybe there was a separation issue and the tower told them to go missed. Maybe their pre-landing checklist had an issue, maybe a maintenance issue came up. Maybe weather or a sudden wind change caused some concern. Could be anything.

Coffee is my story and I am sticking to it! :tongue:

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Originally Posted by Derf

Coffee is my story and I am sticking to it! :tongue:

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LOL!

there was a video that I can't seem to find of a European carrier's FA getting undressed in the cockpit...let us not forget the wonderful distraction of breasticles.

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Originally Posted by threeholerglory

there was a video that I can't seem to find of a European carrier's FA getting undressed in the cockpit...let us not forget the wonderful distraction of breasticles.

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Preach on my brother. Preach on.

Essentially, when in doubt - go around (or go missed if on instrument approach). So any reason qualifies - be that there is another aircraft on a runway or you just got a funny feeling (some may be easier to explain later than others). While these are not that uncommon, I have yet to experience one while flying on an airliner. I have heard one while listening to JFK tower a while ago of a Speedbird deciding to go around because whoever landed in front of him was still on the runway. The tower basically said "ok, he would of been off the runway, but that's ok".

My own go arounds were usually the results of an unstable approach. The latest one was a couple of weeks ago during my first flight in 2.5 years - we had some pretty nasty gusty crosswinds and during one of the landings it just didn't look right once we were about 100ft above so I executed the go around. Got some brownie points from the instructor as well.

Last week while spotting in the marning hours as JetBlue aborted landed because of wake turbulance from a previous arrival (TAM) on 31R. As "Forest Gump" would say "Missed Approaches Happen" or "Shift Happens" :))) (as in ATC shifting runways)

I am on Live ATC right now and an Eagle had to call off the approach due to the fact he didn't have traffic in visual and not enough spacing

Witnessed an Aer Lingus A330 last Saturday at Logan do a miss only because he was way to high on final, then an AC E170 had one because preceding traffic didn't clear the runway fast enough