I was on Jetblue flight 811 today from IAD to FLL and just as we were about to land it was wheels up and start climbing. How common is a go around? I have done a lot of flying and this is the first time this has happened. I would appreciate anybodys input. Thanks
It’s a more common occurrence than most people think, although not necessarily common. Most of the time it is just because the plane ahead of them didn’t get off the active in time, or something like that where the plane was never in any danger, as opposed to aborted takeoffs.
I’m sure it happens more often than you’d think, but it costs airlines quite a bit of money in time and fuel.
I’d venture to guess (I have no hard statistics) that most go-arounds are due to some sort of unstabilzed approach, maybe caused by a unfavorable crosswind, long landing or some other unplanned condition usually due to weather or poor planning.
funny…I was on Jet Blue from JFK to Palm Beach on the 17th and we did a go around as well. The plane in front of us didn’t clear the runway in time for us to land…just as Newark777 said.
Thanks everybody for your replys. It seems that it is a very common occurence. Most of the time the departing aircraft is not completely off the runway.
Not to alarm you, but the other day I saw how a go-around looks from the outside 
My buddy’s condo is right next to the landing path at SAN and we were out in his balcony on the 17th floor watching planes land. Every plane had pretty much the same approach, similar altitude, speed, etc, until we saw a US Airways A32x visibly coming in much higher than the rest and descending rapidly (at that point the plane was about 10-15 seconds from landing), my buddy goes “he won’t make it”, and sure enough a second later we hear the engines roar, nose tilts up and she’s doing a go-around. Obviously it was a botched landing attempt, bright sunny day, the runway was clear, and I heard that you really have to watch the landing at SAN because of the hilly terrain and houses in the landing path. 10 minutes later they’re coming back again and this time the landing was perfect I wonder what the pilot told the passengers
Pilot: “Just kidding!!! And you all thought we were going to land.”
It’s usually more fun to blame the flight crew but of course you probably don’t know what sort of crossing or altitude restrictions they had – you can often be “suckered into” a high/fast landing.
“Uh, folks, sorry about that landing. At the last moment I saw a little pussy cat on the runway and figured it would be better to save its life at the risk of all you folks here on this aircraft.”
So, now he gets a commendation from all of the animals rights people and makes US Airways (note the correct name of the airline) look good.
There you go again. Trying to justify the boo boo…
True, and will probably never know for sure but it’s a very simple airport layout, one runway, landings from the east, takeoffs to the west, and this plane was probably coming from PHL or CLT so its heading was not too far off from the runway orientation so it didn’t have to make a big sweeping turn or something, no other major airport nearby that could generate traffic that could interfere with landings afaik.
LOL But I read somewhere else here on this board that they are allowed one boo boo. Silly humans.
Maybe pilot said, “Oops, sorry folks, the runway moved.” 
Actually, at certain airports that have surface detection radar, the radar is so accurate that it can detect blowing grass and banking snow. Controllers are required to instruct to pilot’s to go around if they are alerted of a runway infraction of any type including animals or humans.
I don’t know if SAN has ASDE, but i know first hand it works well and can be another reason for go arounds.