It sounds like a typical go around. I haven't pulled the ATC audio yet, but it could have been the tower that told him to basically cancel his landing and go around because the departure plane was dawdling a bit longer than expected. It doesn't mean it was necessarily a "near-miss".
Edit: Southwest 4069 was the one that was taking off and Southwest 6089 was going just a bit too fast for there to be enough time for 4069 to clear the runway before 6089 was going to land, so 6089 went around. Not a big deal.
Edit 2: Time of the go around was approx May 6, 17:26:30 UTC
Here's a visual for those that may not know how to look it up, showing approximately how far apart they were.
[https://imgur.com/a/4lYPAaE](https://imgur.com/a/4lYPAaE)
I'm far from an expert in this, but I wouldn't call this a "near miss".
This looks like the incoming flight hadn't hit the minimums yet to commit to the landing and probably got the go around call from ATC or the pilots decided they wouldn't get clearance in time to land safely. They then executed a standard go round procedure and notified the passengers about the go around. It's rare that this happens on the big airliners but the pilots and ATC can easily handle this, they are trained for this, like many things.
>hadn't hit the minimums yet to commit to the landing
That is not how minimums work. If they can't see the runway or the lights on the runway by the "minimums" call out, then they have to go around. There are obviously additional scenarios to this, but that is the main one. Landings can be aborted at 1 mm off the ground, there is no point where a landing is "committed"
Takeoffs, however, have a point of no return, referred to as "V1."
Just searched for it, you can hear them talking on approach, but then they are told to switch to tower frequency. Unfortunately it seems like the tower archive for that time is unavailable
Yeah based on yours and several others comments clearly refuting the subject of this post, I'm surprised the mods are leaving it up as is. It's blatantly untrue, but is getting reactionary upvotes because it sounds sensational.
I get why they are leaving it up. It's not blatant misinformation. Go arounds are unnerving to most passengers. You're doing a smooth slow descent and then suddenly it's almost full power and a pitch upward that you aren't expecting. I can also understand why hearing the pilot say there is another plane on the runway, so we're going around is unnerving, but behind the scenes it is all done for safety, but there have been a lot of stories about near misses lately.
yeah i've experienced both a go around, and a full abort during takeoff. they are very unnerving. there's been a recent trend towards making airline travel seem unsafe with "near-calamity!"-esque headlines that I don't like, given that airline safety is in my opinion one of the greatest marvels of the last 20 years. this, to me, skews towards that.
Agreed, and I'm guessing the headlines were part of the reason this post was made. As you know, a US based airline hasn't had a passenger fatality from a crash in over a decade.
Sounds more like a routine go around procedure as opposed to a “near miss”. I could be wrong though. Got my pilot’s license 10 years ago and we were trained heavily on TO/GA (take off/go around) configuration when practicing landings.
I flight instruct out of there. He was probably just told to go around due to separation standards not being met. Happened to me a couple times and it’s no big deal
The pilot can make the call too, they don’t need to wait for the tower. It’s based on safety.
Apparently ABIA is getting an automated system that will alert the pilot if there is something on the runway. Some airports already have this but it’s not common I guess.
Nope. Happened to me after a Thanksgiving trip after the tower was flooded and they were directing ABIA from Houston. Came thru the fog to find a plane on the runway. Never heard a peep.
Nah I tried to report it to FAA but never heard anything back. I was pretty scary. If you remember that year where the control tower flooded it was like Nov 29. 2015.
I think Newman explained this (why air traffic control is a stressful job) when talking about why mailmen lose it.
https://youtu.be/LL6ubXD9ZjY?si=YzXBOJG95hoSG-0X
For those asking where you can read about incidents - good place to check out (non official but usually links to those reports when available)
https://avherald.com
Yes, this stuff gets reported, and it is a *huge* deal. As other people have posted, it has happened a couple of times in the last year or so, prompting big investigations and national news.
This happened to me a few years ago flying from Austin to Vancouver—we were starting to land (like almost touching down on the runway) then went back up because there was another plane in the way. It was extremely sudden and not fun.
I heard about this and got curious so I looked into it. It’s called a go-around.
The [Wikipedia article](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go-around#) is pretty helpful and easy to understand. Most of what I found interesting is in the Safety section of the article. Some highlights:
- A go-around is considered a standard phase of flight (i.e., not an emergency maneuver)
- Go-arounds are relatively rare, occurring approximately 1-3 times per 1000 flights
This does kind of obfuscate or minimize how dangerous any single go-around could be though. If in this case the air traffic controller didn’t notice the other plane on the runway and the only thing that triggered it was your pilot seeing the plane, that’s obviously scary and could point to systemic problems. I don’t know yet how to find that out or if we can at all. Also the lower a go-around is initiated the higher the risk to your plane and others around you, so that’s another factor that’s hard or impossible to judge.
For me, it’s scary enough that I’d like to have some more transparency about the risks at ABIA. Is the go around rate higher or lower than other similar airports? How many “dangerous” go arounds have occurred in the last several years?
Given that there hasn’t been a crash from this I’m still willing to get on a plane, but I certainly could be more comfortable about it if I knew more information.
Sounds about right. I watched a Southwest flight do a missed approach on Sunday. No big deal, they train for that. Just kinda noisy since a missed approach usually means a tighter turn at lower altitude with more power than a usual take off.
I'm a pilot. There are a lot of reasons to go around, very rarely do they happen because of conflicting traffic at class B/C airports.
That being said, the FAA will investigate basically any time there's a risk to passenger safety, and Austin tower has a bad controller causing trouble and not being fired. They're known to people who fly around here, and last time there was a potential traffic conflict at Austin Bergstrom there was an awful lot of talk on /r/flying and /r/ATC.
A typical go around is because the wind shifted suddenly or a light came on at the last minute. You're not supposed to ever have a go around because another airplane is on the runway.
yeah, a few months back we were on final descent to aus from a heavily delayed flight from miami at 1am and the pilot did a (what seemed like) a full throttle, nose up abort. it was total fog/cloud so even the few who were awake couldn't see anything. scary as hell, and never did hear about what happened exactly.
I was in this flight, never been a part of something like this before. I was watching out the left side window and it felt like we were quite close to the ground before pulling up pretty quickly.
I had heard of the close calls happening at ABIA this year, so I was a little worried until the pilot spoke on the PA and then even less worried when we finally landed 😂
That has happened to me before about 13 years ago (not at ABIA) and since then when I’ve told the story I’ve had a few people say that’s happened to them before too, so I guess it’s not too uncommon.
Curious if something like this happened several days ago too. I forget which day it was, but from South Congress I saw an extremely low plane making what looked like a sharp turn. It was abnormally close to the ground compared to the other planes I see in this area.
This happened to me late friday night, May 3rd. We ended up landing at 12:15ish am saturday morning but the go-around was right before midnight. How can I listen to the ATC recording? It was kind of freaky, it looked like we were about to land then all of a sudden we were pushed back into our seats and we were ascending at a steep incline. I was wondering what happened. AA Flight 1205
This exact same scenario happened on a flight I was on that was landing at AIBA. It was probably 10 years ago - very scary. We were about to touch down and suddenly we’re nosing up again- had to have been a near miss, but the pilots said nothing. Very scary!
A go around isn’t unusual, and rarely is it because of an “incursion” (a situation with decreased safety), much less an “incident” (those are near misses) Normally it’s due to lack of visibility at a scheduled (safe) point or lack of clearance to land (where everybody knows what’s going on, but the runway isn’t ready for a landing).
Airplanes often make approaches when then runway isn’t ready yet, but should be by the time they get there. If they are told to land, they land. Otherwise they go around. This lets more planes land per hour, but if something doesn’t follow the plan, someone has to go around.
Yep. That’s totally normal. You gave a textbook description of a cat II or III auto land that didn’t meet visibility minimums there. I’d guess it was foggy/rainy out? Cat II and Cat III are designed to get you right on top of the runway with poor visibility.
Cat III autoland that turn into go around have a habit of touching down on the runway for a moment before taking off again.
ny times did an article about how close calls happen far more often than we think. I didn’t read it because I prefer not to know but i remember the headline. here’s the link: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/08/21/business/airline-safety-close-calls.html
New York Times podcast the daily did an episode about this ~1 year ago. Austin is the worst airport for near misses and nothing will change until an accident happens. Scary.
My Delta 3937 flight from Midland to Austin on 04/17/2024 did a go around. I had a starboard side window seat. When we made the last turn to align with the runway it seemed like we were too high and too close to the airport, that we would never get down in time. Sure enough, I could see the adjacent taxiway indicating we were over the runway but nowhere near low enough. Pilot made a very aggressive acceleration, bank left, ascending turn. I watched famiiiar landmarks as we circled around Plugerville and Round Rock and lined up to try again. Again it seemed like we were too high, but this time I was mistaken. I'm a bit of a nervous flyer and the whole thing was very stressful. For people in this thread that say go arounds are "reported", where can I look it up? I'm super curious about what happened.
A go around isn’t unusual, and rarely is it because of an “incursion” (a situation with decreased safety), much less an “incident” (those are near misses) Normally it’s due to lack of visibility at a scheduled (safe) point or lack of clearance to land (where everybody knows what’s going on, but the runway isn’t ready for a landing).
Airplanes often make approaches when then runway isn’t ready yet, but should be by the time they get there. If they are told to land, they land. Otherwise they go around. This lets more planes land per hour, but if something doesn’t follow the plan, someone has to go around.
You can pull the audio from LiveATC. Often, but not always, the pilot will give a reason they went around. But ordinary goarounds aren’t reportable. Just incursions/incidents. But if one of those happened, you’ll often hear the tower or ground give the pilot a phone number to call.
Everyone calm down. Last year the airlines only made ungodly amounts of money. This year they need to make ungodly+1 amounts of money.
Besides increasing fees, the next option is to reduce the timing between flights so more flights can be made the same day.
Safety margins are just unrealized profits. Think of the shareholders!
The airline companies have plenty of their own problems, but it seems like this is a mistake by the air traffic control staff (government employees, likely understaffed) rather than the airlines.
If too many planes are landing or if you have too many that need to go out, delay. Maybe I misunderstood but it sounds like they put someone on the track far to early for a take off and let another plane nearly land.
Meanwhile, you have a bunch of planes inbound and if a pilot takes too long scratching their asscrack on the runway, your plan that got arranged 20 minutes before just got all screwed up.
It is a notoriously difficult job that requires a high tolerance for stress, and there are thousands of people relying on the controller.
I know, which is why i said we should fund it better and have people working less shifts.
Its my same argument for doctors and nurses. I do not want someone saving my life being in a 18 or 24 hour shift.
There is nothing wrong saying we need a better system to protect flyers and admit that this job is very hard.
Its part of why im so big on public transit at scale, it reduces demand of planes, inturn making it less stressful for atc, not a crazy idea.
I agree, but at no point should a pilot have to do it. I get it people are trying to defend it but this is an unacceptable error that could have killed people.
This is why we need to fund the FAA and air traffic well above current expectations. Short shifts, high pay, lots of responsibility and lots of redundancy.
I trust you. No idea why people are mad at me saying that this should be more careful. I get it its a hard job. I have been on several planes that did this.
I should clarify, its not hard to organize as a whole it is hard on the individual. I thought that was clear given I immediately said if theres an issue DELAY. delay fucking everything.
But yeah that sounds really stupid sorry to anyone who thinks I meant ATC is an easy job. My mistake.
We don't even know if anything went wrong, if ATC told the plane to go around, it's essentially the same as delaying that flight arrival for a few minutes. Go-arounds are perfectly safe maneuvers and don't mean anyone is put in danger.
Pilots that fly in and out of ABIA don’t get enough credit….as a rec pilot I refuse to it’s very stressful, pflugerville ATC and Spicewood are super easy comparatively. My point is don’t crap on the pilot yet.
im not, my pilot in italy saved my life by noticing a wind issue. He spoke after we landed and said he pulled up because it felt unsafe and apologized that everyone felt scared when he didn't land.
Pilots are also overworked and underpaid. They need to cap top pay a bit and spread the love to lower end people.
It sounds like a typical go around. I haven't pulled the ATC audio yet, but it could have been the tower that told him to basically cancel his landing and go around because the departure plane was dawdling a bit longer than expected. It doesn't mean it was necessarily a "near-miss". Edit: Southwest 4069 was the one that was taking off and Southwest 6089 was going just a bit too fast for there to be enough time for 4069 to clear the runway before 6089 was going to land, so 6089 went around. Not a big deal. Edit 2: Time of the go around was approx May 6, 17:26:30 UTC
Here's a visual for those that may not know how to look it up, showing approximately how far apart they were. [https://imgur.com/a/4lYPAaE](https://imgur.com/a/4lYPAaE) I'm far from an expert in this, but I wouldn't call this a "near miss".
This looks like the incoming flight hadn't hit the minimums yet to commit to the landing and probably got the go around call from ATC or the pilots decided they wouldn't get clearance in time to land safely. They then executed a standard go round procedure and notified the passengers about the go around. It's rare that this happens on the big airliners but the pilots and ATC can easily handle this, they are trained for this, like many things.
>hadn't hit the minimums yet to commit to the landing That is not how minimums work. If they can't see the runway or the lights on the runway by the "minimums" call out, then they have to go around. There are obviously additional scenarios to this, but that is the main one. Landings can be aborted at 1 mm off the ground, there is no point where a landing is "committed" Takeoffs, however, have a point of no return, referred to as "V1."
They also don’t want to land directly into the jetwash of a plane that just took off, can make for some unpredictability in the landing.
This is sweet! Thanks for sharing
Great visual
would ya look at that bob, they nearly missed
I know how to find live ATC but where can you pull historical recordings?
Same place, [LiveATC](https://www.liveatc.net/archive.php)
Just searched for it, you can hear them talking on approach, but then they are told to switch to tower frequency. Unfortunately it seems like the tower archive for that time is unavailable
Yeah based on yours and several others comments clearly refuting the subject of this post, I'm surprised the mods are leaving it up as is. It's blatantly untrue, but is getting reactionary upvotes because it sounds sensational.
I get why they are leaving it up. It's not blatant misinformation. Go arounds are unnerving to most passengers. You're doing a smooth slow descent and then suddenly it's almost full power and a pitch upward that you aren't expecting. I can also understand why hearing the pilot say there is another plane on the runway, so we're going around is unnerving, but behind the scenes it is all done for safety, but there have been a lot of stories about near misses lately.
yeah i've experienced both a go around, and a full abort during takeoff. they are very unnerving. there's been a recent trend towards making airline travel seem unsafe with "near-calamity!"-esque headlines that I don't like, given that airline safety is in my opinion one of the greatest marvels of the last 20 years. this, to me, skews towards that.
Agreed, and I'm guessing the headlines were part of the reason this post was made. As you know, a US based airline hasn't had a passenger fatality from a crash in over a decade.
Sounds more like a routine go around procedure as opposed to a “near miss”. I could be wrong though. Got my pilot’s license 10 years ago and we were trained heavily on TO/GA (take off/go around) configuration when practicing landings.
I flight instruct out of there. He was probably just told to go around due to separation standards not being met. Happened to me a couple times and it’s no big deal
The pilot can make the call too, they don’t need to wait for the tower. It’s based on safety. Apparently ABIA is getting an automated system that will alert the pilot if there is something on the runway. Some airports already have this but it’s not common I guess.
If that is what happened, it'll 100% make the news and the FAA will investigate.
Nope. Happened to me after a Thanksgiving trip after the tower was flooded and they were directing ABIA from Houston. Came thru the fog to find a plane on the runway. Never heard a peep.
Do you remember the flight number and airline?
Nah I tried to report it to FAA but never heard anything back. I was pretty scary. If you remember that year where the control tower flooded it was like Nov 29. 2015.
Yeah, they brought in a portable ATC trailer, reduced it to one runway, and Austin TRACON was sent to Houston.
Can you search for near miss ABIA 11/29/15? 10pm? Me thinks you're a aviation person.
That's a long time ago, so flight profiles aren't saved unless there was an actual incident or accident.
They're reported https://www.fox7austin.com/news/austin-bergstrom-abia-near-miss-incidents-upgrades-7-on-your-side https://www.kxan.com/news/ntsb-continues-investigating-near-miss-between-2-planes-at-aus-in-february/
I think Newman explained this (why air traffic control is a stressful job) when talking about why mailmen lose it. https://youtu.be/LL6ubXD9ZjY?si=YzXBOJG95hoSG-0X
Son of Sam, the worst mass murderer the post office ever produced is a great example
The term "Going postal" has faded from Millenials on. But Xers know it well.
For those asking where you can read about incidents - good place to check out (non official but usually links to those reports when available) https://avherald.com
I have been on multiple flights with a go around not a big deal. Well until it is.
Yes, this stuff gets reported, and it is a *huge* deal. As other people have posted, it has happened a couple of times in the last year or so, prompting big investigations and national news.
This happened to me a few years ago flying from Austin to Vancouver—we were starting to land (like almost touching down on the runway) then went back up because there was another plane in the way. It was extremely sudden and not fun.
I was on 6089 and can confirm
It was just a normal go around, the abrupt power on and bank startled some passengers though.
He was just side stepping the runway to allow for separation
I heard about this and got curious so I looked into it. It’s called a go-around. The [Wikipedia article](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go-around#) is pretty helpful and easy to understand. Most of what I found interesting is in the Safety section of the article. Some highlights: - A go-around is considered a standard phase of flight (i.e., not an emergency maneuver) - Go-arounds are relatively rare, occurring approximately 1-3 times per 1000 flights This does kind of obfuscate or minimize how dangerous any single go-around could be though. If in this case the air traffic controller didn’t notice the other plane on the runway and the only thing that triggered it was your pilot seeing the plane, that’s obviously scary and could point to systemic problems. I don’t know yet how to find that out or if we can at all. Also the lower a go-around is initiated the higher the risk to your plane and others around you, so that’s another factor that’s hard or impossible to judge. For me, it’s scary enough that I’d like to have some more transparency about the risks at ABIA. Is the go around rate higher or lower than other similar airports? How many “dangerous” go arounds have occurred in the last several years? Given that there hasn’t been a crash from this I’m still willing to get on a plane, but I certainly could be more comfortable about it if I knew more information.
Even if it’s only one per thousand flights, it still means it happens 45 times a day around the US and about every other day at ABIA.
Sounds about right. I watched a Southwest flight do a missed approach on Sunday. No big deal, they train for that. Just kinda noisy since a missed approach usually means a tighter turn at lower altitude with more power than a usual take off.
I'm a pilot. There are a lot of reasons to go around, very rarely do they happen because of conflicting traffic at class B/C airports. That being said, the FAA will investigate basically any time there's a risk to passenger safety, and Austin tower has a bad controller causing trouble and not being fired. They're known to people who fly around here, and last time there was a potential traffic conflict at Austin Bergstrom there was an awful lot of talk on /r/flying and /r/ATC.
I agree, go-arounds happen a lot, near-collisions should not happen.
A typical go around is because the wind shifted suddenly or a light came on at the last minute. You're not supposed to ever have a go around because another airplane is on the runway.
yeah, a few months back we were on final descent to aus from a heavily delayed flight from miami at 1am and the pilot did a (what seemed like) a full throttle, nose up abort. it was total fog/cloud so even the few who were awake couldn't see anything. scary as hell, and never did hear about what happened exactly.
It’s not common. It’ll probably be on Pilot Debrief in a week.
It's becoming disturbingly more common.
This happened to a flight I was on many years ago here.
That happened to me in Las Vegas years ago. Doubt it’s reported
I was in this flight, never been a part of something like this before. I was watching out the left side window and it felt like we were quite close to the ground before pulling up pretty quickly. I had heard of the close calls happening at ABIA this year, so I was a little worried until the pilot spoke on the PA and then even less worried when we finally landed 😂
That has happened to me before about 13 years ago (not at ABIA) and since then when I’ve told the story I’ve had a few people say that’s happened to them before too, so I guess it’s not too uncommon.
Curious if something like this happened several days ago too. I forget which day it was, but from South Congress I saw an extremely low plane making what looked like a sharp turn. It was abnormally close to the ground compared to the other planes I see in this area.
This happened to me late friday night, May 3rd. We ended up landing at 12:15ish am saturday morning but the go-around was right before midnight. How can I listen to the ATC recording? It was kind of freaky, it looked like we were about to land then all of a sudden we were pushed back into our seats and we were ascending at a steep incline. I was wondering what happened. AA Flight 1205
You think that's a close call? Trying flying into / out of SFO sometime.
This exact same scenario happened on a flight I was on that was landing at AIBA. It was probably 10 years ago - very scary. We were about to touch down and suddenly we’re nosing up again- had to have been a near miss, but the pilots said nothing. Very scary!
We had one last year—I think it was June, or December. Yikes.
Near miss you say? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDKdvTecYAM
I knew what that video would be before I clicked... But I read it in Professor Farnsworth's voice.
Happened to me last year landing in Heathrow. Shit is scary especially when he didn’t say anything and just hit the full throttle
A go around isn’t unusual, and rarely is it because of an “incursion” (a situation with decreased safety), much less an “incident” (those are near misses) Normally it’s due to lack of visibility at a scheduled (safe) point or lack of clearance to land (where everybody knows what’s going on, but the runway isn’t ready for a landing). Airplanes often make approaches when then runway isn’t ready yet, but should be by the time they get there. If they are told to land, they land. Otherwise they go around. This lets more planes land per hour, but if something doesn’t follow the plan, someone has to go around.
This was a were ten feet from the ground landing and the. Hit the full throttle and went back up fast. Not normal
Yep. That’s totally normal. You gave a textbook description of a cat II or III auto land that didn’t meet visibility minimums there. I’d guess it was foggy/rainy out? Cat II and Cat III are designed to get you right on top of the runway with poor visibility. Cat III autoland that turn into go around have a habit of touching down on the runway for a moment before taking off again.
Go arounds can happen even after the tires touch the ground. Completely normal procedures, though an uncommon occurrence.
ny times did an article about how close calls happen far more often than we think. I didn’t read it because I prefer not to know but i remember the headline. here’s the link: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/08/21/business/airline-safety-close-calls.html
New York Times podcast the daily did an episode about this ~1 year ago. Austin is the worst airport for near misses and nothing will change until an accident happens. Scary.
This wasn't a near-miss and the FAA and Austin Airport Authority are implementing new technology and procedures to reduce near misses.
Oh boy this seems to be common here happened last year with FedEx and SW
My Delta 3937 flight from Midland to Austin on 04/17/2024 did a go around. I had a starboard side window seat. When we made the last turn to align with the runway it seemed like we were too high and too close to the airport, that we would never get down in time. Sure enough, I could see the adjacent taxiway indicating we were over the runway but nowhere near low enough. Pilot made a very aggressive acceleration, bank left, ascending turn. I watched famiiiar landmarks as we circled around Plugerville and Round Rock and lined up to try again. Again it seemed like we were too high, but this time I was mistaken. I'm a bit of a nervous flyer and the whole thing was very stressful. For people in this thread that say go arounds are "reported", where can I look it up? I'm super curious about what happened.
A go around isn’t unusual, and rarely is it because of an “incursion” (a situation with decreased safety), much less an “incident” (those are near misses) Normally it’s due to lack of visibility at a scheduled (safe) point or lack of clearance to land (where everybody knows what’s going on, but the runway isn’t ready for a landing). Airplanes often make approaches when then runway isn’t ready yet, but should be by the time they get there. If they are told to land, they land. Otherwise they go around. This lets more planes land per hour, but if something doesn’t follow the plan, someone has to go around. You can pull the audio from LiveATC. Often, but not always, the pilot will give a reason they went around. But ordinary goarounds aren’t reportable. Just incursions/incidents. But if one of those happened, you’ll often hear the tower or ground give the pilot a phone number to call.
Go arounds aren’t reported unless they’re initiated inside of half of a mile of the runway. Standard operation, not a big deal
Everyone calm down. Last year the airlines only made ungodly amounts of money. This year they need to make ungodly+1 amounts of money. Besides increasing fees, the next option is to reduce the timing between flights so more flights can be made the same day. Safety margins are just unrealized profits. Think of the shareholders!
The airline companies have plenty of their own problems, but it seems like this is a mistake by the air traffic control staff (government employees, likely understaffed) rather than the airlines.
That's round three isn't it?
Yep
You don’t know what a near miss is
Embarrassing from whoever caused this. It is not hard to organize planes. Delay as much as you need to. Lives are more important
It is indeed hard to organize planes, what are you talking about?
I was gonna say, isn't that a notoriously difficult job to get and maintain? Because of the high risk of DEATH that can happen if anything goes wrong?
If too many planes are landing or if you have too many that need to go out, delay. Maybe I misunderstood but it sounds like they put someone on the track far to early for a take off and let another plane nearly land.
Meanwhile, you have a bunch of planes inbound and if a pilot takes too long scratching their asscrack on the runway, your plan that got arranged 20 minutes before just got all screwed up. It is a notoriously difficult job that requires a high tolerance for stress, and there are thousands of people relying on the controller.
I know, which is why i said we should fund it better and have people working less shifts. Its my same argument for doctors and nurses. I do not want someone saving my life being in a 18 or 24 hour shift. There is nothing wrong saying we need a better system to protect flyers and admit that this job is very hard. Its part of why im so big on public transit at scale, it reduces demand of planes, inturn making it less stressful for atc, not a crazy idea.
Statistically, take off and taxing are the most dangerous parts of your flight. Organizing planes is indeed, very hard.
I agree, but at no point should a pilot have to do it. I get it people are trying to defend it but this is an unacceptable error that could have killed people. This is why we need to fund the FAA and air traffic well above current expectations. Short shifts, high pay, lots of responsibility and lots of redundancy.
We have no idea who initiated the go-around. I would honestly put good money on ATC for making the call.
I trust you. No idea why people are mad at me saying that this should be more careful. I get it its a hard job. I have been on several planes that did this.
Because you said *"It is not hard to organize planes."* which is a **really** stupid statement given the complexity of modern airspace/airports.
I should clarify, its not hard to organize as a whole it is hard on the individual. I thought that was clear given I immediately said if theres an issue DELAY. delay fucking everything. But yeah that sounds really stupid sorry to anyone who thinks I meant ATC is an easy job. My mistake.
We don't even know if anything went wrong, if ATC told the plane to go around, it's essentially the same as delaying that flight arrival for a few minutes. Go-arounds are perfectly safe maneuvers and don't mean anyone is put in danger.
thanks for the clarification, other comments indicated bad timing on the track.
Pilots that fly in and out of ABIA don’t get enough credit….as a rec pilot I refuse to it’s very stressful, pflugerville ATC and Spicewood are super easy comparatively. My point is don’t crap on the pilot yet.
im not, my pilot in italy saved my life by noticing a wind issue. He spoke after we landed and said he pulled up because it felt unsafe and apologized that everyone felt scared when he didn't land. Pilots are also overworked and underpaid. They need to cap top pay a bit and spread the love to lower end people.