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?
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