CNN
—
A pilot flying American Airlines Flight 2246 was preparing to land Tuesday at Ronald Reagan National Airport when air traffic control instructed the flight to “go around” to avoid getting too close to another plane set to depart from the same runway.
A “go-around” is an aviation term for discontinuing a landing and beginning an immediate climb, then following further instructions. The safety maneuver is used to prevent runway incursions – when aircraft, vehicles or people are incorrectly positioned on a runway – as well as to counter other hazards, like sudden wind shifts and less-than-ideal approaches.
While go-arounds can feel jarring to passengers, they are routine, happening more than three times per day on average last year across the United States, said former Department of Transportation Inspector General Mary Schiavo, a CNN analyst.
Less than 90 minutes after the incident at Reagan National, a Southwest Airlines flight in Chicago was forced to abort its landing at the last minute as a private jet crossed the runway it was approaching.
The two incidents came as federal officials investigate a string of recent commercial flight disasters, including a midair collision that killed 67 people less than a month ago at the same Washington, DC, airport; a fatal medevac jet crash in Philadelphia; and a regional airline crash off the coast of Nome, Alaska, that killed 10 people.
While those unsettling events on the heels of a series of close calls at US airports are fueling air travel anxiety, experts say flying is still safer than ever due to technological changes, pilot education and common safety maneuvers – including go-arounds – used by pilots and air traffic controllers.
Here’s what you need to know about go-arounds, how often they happen and how they keep flyers safe:
At the 30 US airports with the most flights – a group that includes Reagan National – go-arounds accounted for about 0.39% of arrivals in fiscal year 2023, according to the Federal Aviation Administration.
While 0.39% might seem like a low figure, go-arounds are still considered common and happen daily in the US, said Michael McCormick, a former FAA air traffic manager and an associate professor in air traffic management at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University.
Pilots can carry out go-arounds if there is a sudden shift in the wind, an obstruction on the runway or the aircraft was inadvertently overshooting the runway. In the case of American Airlines Flight 2246, the maneuver allowed “another aircraft more time for takeoff,” American Airlines told CNN in an email Wednesday.
Tuesday’s incident was typical of what you would see at an airport on any given day, McCormick said.
Still, it’s significant when it happens, he said. And for airline passengers who are unfamiliar with what goes on inside the cockpit, the maneuver may appear sudden.
“Passengers aren’t told in advance it’s going to happen, but they’ll recognize it when suddenly they’re coming in to land and the aircraft just starts rising back up again,” McCormick said, again noting go-arounds are routine.
“This is something that pilots practice in flight simulators on a regular basis,” he added.
Data shows Flight 2246 was about 1.25 miles away from the departing plane before the American Airlines flight turned and began to climb, according to FlightRadar 24.
Go-arounds can set up more ideal landings
A go-around is “an excellent choice” when a plane is outside parameters for a proper approach, including when the space between flights isn’t right, said Erika Armstrong, a pilot and director of marketing for the Advanced Aircrew Academy, an online aviation training program.
The vast majority of go-arounds occur because an aircraft is too high or going too fast to approach the runway correctly, she added: “Every aircraft is pushing at an airport at a different speed, a different weight, a different configuration, hitting different winds.”
Go-arounds also happen often at airports with few runways and outdated runway designs, McCormick said. Reagan National Airport, for instance, has one main runway for large aircraft, giving busy airline traffic just one favored option for landing and departing.
This is partly due to the airport’s location and age, McCormick noted: “On one side is the Potomac River, and on the other side is urban development. So, they have no ability to build additional runways.”
Operating with a single runway does not necessarily increase the risk of “close calls,” McCormick said, but airports with multiple runways can decrease the time between each arrival and each departure without risking planes getting too close together.
Experts and lawmakers have raised concerns about the crowded airspace above the Washington region, with tight security measures in place, military and government helicopters regularly flying through and airplane flights taking off from Reagan National, which boasts the busiest runway in the country.
Go-arounds, McCormick noted, are often used to prevent runway incursions, which can be caused by factors including operational issues, pilot deviations and vehicle or pedestrian deviations, according to the FAA. And they can vary greatly in severity.
The Southwest Airlines flight that was forced to abort its landing Tuesday at Chicago Midway International Airport came as close as about 2,050 feet to the private jet before it initiated a go-around, according to FlightRadar 24.
Midway Airport has an unusual layout with four operational runways that bisect each other like a large X, Schiavo noted. “When you look at the airport map, it looks like a plaid kilt,” she said. “There are just so many runways, taxiways, etc.”
Of the 362 documented incursions at all “Core 30” airports in fiscal year 2023, only one was characterized as “a serious incident in which a collision was narrowly avoided,” while eight had “significant potential for collision,” the FAA reported.
Between January 2023 and September 2024, the National Transportation Safety Board investigated 13 runway incursions involving commercial, or for-hire, flights. Those incursions varied in category from some with “no immediate safety consequences” to “narrowly” avoiding a collision.
After a series of close calls at US airports in early 2023, the FAA launched several investigations into near-collisions and created an independent safety review team.
It found inconsistent funding, outdated technology, short-staffed air traffic control towers and onerous training requirements among the issues “rendering the current level of safety unsustainable,” the agency’s November 2023 final report states.
The FAA since then says it has taken several actions to limit close calls at airports, including working to address air controller fatigue and announcing grants to improve airport infrastructure.
And in the first three months of 2024, the rate of serious incidents decreased by 59% from the same period the prior year, the FAA says on its website.
In 2023, a go-around was initiated by a pilot to avoid a collision between two planes – with a total of 372 people on board – at Sarasota Bradenton International Airport in Florida, according to an NTSB report released Wednesday. The planes were less than 3,200 feet apart and at the same altitude at their closest point, the report said.
An air traffic controller’s “failure to prioritize and properly monitor the runway and airport environment” and his “erroneous assumption” the first plane would be gone before the next landed caused the close call, the NTSB found. The controller was the only person working in the tower at the time and looked away from the runway “to a lower priority task,” the report said after more than two years of work to determine the “probable cause” of the incident.
Another runway incursion in the same year was attributed to an older taxiway design, the NTSB found. A United Airlines Boeing 777 with 301 people on board crossed a runway as a smaller, single-engine Cessna 206 cargo plane was landing on that same runway at the Daniel K. Inouye International Airport in Honolulu.
The incident happened because the airport continued to use an older design of a taxiway despite pilots repeatedly failing to properly stop where designated, the NTSB found. The area was identified as a “runway incursion hot spot,” according to the report.
While the incidents are concerning, the FAA has established layers of safety to protect flyers, including technology, training and procedures, experts say.
Advances in recent years include automated maps in 35 control towers displaying planes on the ground and alerting controllers when there is a potential problem; improved electronic maps for pilots in the cockpit; deployment of a type of stop lights on runway crossings at 20 airports; improvements in airport maps and signage; and new training videos and simulations for pilots and controllers.
It’s part of what the FAA calls a “shift from a compliance-based safety system to a risk-based, data-driven, integrated systems solution to runway safety.”
“Having situational awareness and teaching that to pilots in this highly dense air space,” Armstrong said, “it’s so amazing truly how safe we are.”