What made a pilot to abort landing as the airplane approached the runway?
Since I was not on the flight, I can’t give an answer about a specific flight. There are several reasons why a pilot will abort a landing and set up to try again. This is called “taking a go around”. If you are flying instruments it is called a “missed approach”.When I am in my small plane the most common reason to take a go around is because I am coming in too fast. I might have been a little high on the approach, I tried to dive down, get on the runway, but as I approach the near end of the runway, I see that air speed is too high. If I have a long runway, maybe 4000 feet or more, I might just coast along just over the runway and let the energy burn off. But if runway is short, maybe 2500 feet or less, I will go around if I am more than 5–10 knots too fast. I did this just last week.I might decide that the cross wind was too much to handle. If I am flying instruments and I get down to IFR minimums and I can’t see the runway or the airport, I go missed. This is rare, I probably would not have gone flying in the small plane if it was that foggy.A pilot of a passenger jet will abort the landing if they are not on a fully stabilized approach when they are 1000 feet above the runway. This means they have landing gear down, flaps in landing configuration, on speed, on the glide slope, on the localizer. Perfectly lined up to land, in other words. You don’t want to be making a lot of changes or adjustments in the last few minutes. You want to see everything is on track, not much to do, one last check to make sure gear is down, land it…..
Why did the pilot abort the flight? My sister was flying in SQ851 today (20 Aug 2018) when the pilot aborted the landing because someone went to the toilet?
The first answer is that which has already been given - it’s the law. The pilot was prohibited from taking off once the passenger left their seat.The second answer is liability - the risk of injury to that passenger at take off and landing is much greater than if they were seated and unbelted, for example. Company policy would dictate in both instances they had no choice but to abort.The real culprit in this story is the passenger, not the pilot. The pilot was doing legally what he was required to do to keep EVERY passenger safe. The passenger ignored the instructions of the crew, and was therefore acting illegally.Now given, that if the passenger felt they were going to have an emergency of their own in the seat, I’m not sure I wouldn’t have done the same, however, waiting until the aircraft is on an active runway is not the way to resolve the situation. The passenger would have been better off calling a flight attendant and explaining that they were going to have to deal with a much worse situation if they DIDN’T USE THE BATHROOM RIGHT NOW, and then the crew could have taken action. Most likely allowing the captain to pause at the holding point or even diverting on to a different taxiway
The pilots on Air France flight 7775 ditched the plane after ingesting a bird in the number one engine. Why?
They didn't "ditch" the aircraft. They followed fairly common aviation standards of regarding this incident. "The aircraft (F-GMPG), on a scheduled flight from Pau to Paris Charles de Gaulle, was cleared for takeoff at 11:15am local time. The takeoff roll was normal. Just after the Fokker became airborne, a bird was apparently ingested into the number one engine. The flight crew chose to abort the takeoff, touched back down, but were unable to stop prior to reaching the end of the runway. The jet vacated the runway and collided with a passing truck, killing the driver. The airplane then slid to a stop in a field." -ref. AirDisaster.com As to why this would happen: 1) Bird strikes can be very serious to an aircraft, a bird could easily damage or shutdown a turbojet aircraft's motor. The air intake fans can be damage by reasonably small things. Even loose chunks of ice can damage an engine. 2) Take-off roll and lift-off are considered critical stages of flight. A dangerous situation developing during lift-off can be deadly, so the pilots choose to abort their take-off and put the aircraft back on the runway. However, they apparently, were going to fast to stop on their remaining amount of runway. 3) That aircraft has 2 engines. While an aircraft "CAN" fly with relative safety with one engine out...taking off with one engine out is not safe. Take-off has some characteristics that greatly differ from normal airborne flight. First, at take off, the aircraft will actually begin flying at a slower then required airspeed for flight because of something known as ground effect. Take offs are also periods of maximum thrust for an aircraft. If the pilots had tried to continue their take off, they would have had a lot of torque 'twisting' the plane as they departed. If they would have continued their climb out, they quite possibly would have experienced a stall and possibly spiral the aircraft...which would have been a much worse accident. They seem to have done the safest course of action they could in regards to aborting their take off.