Go-Around Criteria Refinement for Transport Category Aircraft

Presently, airline pilots are trained to go around if, when lower than 500 ft above the ground, they are outside of a handful of parameters such as airspeed, position, and rate of descent. At times, pilots do not comply with these criteria, perhaps owing to their conservative nature or complexity. This paper examines potential refinements to the continue-to-land decision from the combined results of three flight simulator experiments. Potential refinements include simplifying the number of parameters and lowering the altitude at which pilots make the decision. First, refinements were developed by evaluating pilots’ touchdown performance and qualitative data in a variety of starting and environmental conditions. Second, 30 of those pilots evaluated the refinements under several induced instabilities during the approach. The results showed little difference in touchdown performance when lowering the decision altitude from 500 to 300 ft; however, significant differences arose when the decision altitude was lowered further to 100 ft. The proposed new criteria include assessments of deviations in airspeed and position, no rate-of-descent audio warning, and having an appropriate engine setting at 1000, 500, and 300 ft height above threshold. Additionally, a recommendation is made that if the proposed criteria are not met at the 1000 or 500 ft height above threshold the pilots may make corrections and continue the approach; however, if the criteria are not met at 300 ft, then a go-around should be performed.