About a week ago I was on a 737 sitting on the left side of the aircraft. We were flying north, gear down, probably about 2,000 feet (not sure, it was dark) and getting ready to land on runway 34L. There is an interstate that runs east/west just south of the airport and I could clearly see it up ahead of us so we had to be only a couple of miles (if that) from the runway. All of a sudden we stopped decending, the engines came up and we started a pretty steep bank to the right. As we turned I could see the runway that we had been linded up with. We continued to make a full 360 degree turn at which point we leveled off, started descending again, and landed about 3-4 minutes later.
I have never expericned such a thing before and was just wondering if anyone knows why a manuever like this would have occurred. Several other passengers seemed to be puzzled/uneasy when it happened. Maybe another aircraft on the runway that we were headed for?
Another airplane either landing ahead of you or one on the runway waiting for takeoff is the most likely suspect. The controller was losing his required separation so had to ask your flight to do a quick 360 degree turn in order to regain the separation.
Or the aircraft could have been too high or too fast or the pilot dropped his pencil. Any number things could have made the 360 turn necessary or a good idea.
“near” in the near miss is all relative. the majority of go arounds are probably due to landed aircraft not clearing the runway and it is very common at busy airports. The separation of course is also a possibility and it got a lot more scrutiny after hillary clinton’s minimum separation incident (wait that didn;t sound quite right…) I’ve had one go around while flying on an AA 737 and one, a lot more interesting, an air france 747 landing at KMIA from Paris. On the last one I go a really cool aerial view of the Miami Airport which you can’t get during normal takeoffs and landings.
