The Go Around Mindset

When do you decide to go around?
 
Do you make that decision after every effort to salvage the approach and landing has failed? Or do you go around at a gated, agreed upon point in the approach, when things don't look right or when the airplane starts talking to you?
 
I want to offer a perspective on the go around that you may not have come across before.
 
Over 46 years and 24,000 hours of flying, I've had the chance to watch a lot of approaches. As a check airman on the B757 and B767, with more than 12,000 hours in those two airplanes alone, I've seen plenty of approaches that called for a go around. Very few of them got one.
 
The mindset is usually built around getting the airplane on the ground at all costs. We keep working the problem until there is no room left to salvage anything, and then, at the last possible second, we reluctantly go around. Earlier in my career I was guilty of that mindset, too. We saw the tragic result of that recently in Miami.
 
Think about how we brief. We cover the approach, the landing, the exit plan, the winds, the ceilings. All of it points toward one outcome. We are going to do X, and then we are going to land.
 
What if we turned that around? What if the go around became the primary objective?
 
Stick with me. Here is what that briefing sounds like:
 
"We are going to fly this approach and go around prior to landing, UNLESS at 1,500 feet I have the gear down, flaps 20 (for the B767), and a speed of 180 knots or less."
 
"We are going to continue toward the missed approach, UNLESS at 1,000 feet AGL we are fully configured with final approach flaps and a speed of minus 0 / plus 15 knots of target."

"We are going to go around at 500 feet, UNLESS our approach is stable and on the correct path"
 
"We are going to the threshold and going around, UNLESS I am in a position to land in the touchdown zone and on centerline."
 
"We are going around in the flare, UNLESS I am still in a position to touch down within the first 3,000 feet of the runway or the first third of the runway, whichever is shorter."
 
"We are going around, UNLESS the speedbrakes are extended and the thrust reversers are deployed."
 
Briefing it out loud that way may sound a little silly. The mindset behind it is not. The go around stops being the thing you fall back on once you have run out of ideas and options, and becomes the plan you are flying until you and the airplane earn the right to land.

This is the Swiss cheese model in real life. Each gate is one slice, and a single missed opportunity rarely brings an airplane down by itself. It takes every slice failing in sequence, every gate crossed while the circumstances change and the plan doesn't, before the holes line up and the chain closes. Break it at any one gate, and the outcome changes.
 
So here is the question I would leave you with. Are you ready to go around at every moment, and at every gate, on your stabilized approach plan?