For you pilots out there....touch & go with a commercial airliner

[skinnerd]

Had a very strange thing happen on one of my flights this past year.
Was flying NWA into Minneapolis during the summer.
The weather was fine....no high winds, storms, etc.
Coming into land, everything appeared normal.

After touchdown on the runway, a couple seconds later, the engines were rev'd up and off into the air we went.
Just like a "touch and go" that an Air Force pilot would practice.
All the passengers knew something was wrong.
No announcement made by the pilots or flight attendants.
Climbing back up, not all the way to 30k feet, but at least 10-15k, and circled for another 30 minutes before landing.
Then landing as normal.

Pretty strange....and alarming I think.
Anyone have a clue what that was all about.
Did they miss enough of the runway on the 1st attempt such that we would not have been able to stop without going off the runway?
Or were we going to collide with another plane already on the runway?
I really can't come up with a good, plausible scenario.


Do any of you pilot types out there have an idea?
Thanks

[jriera]

Done a few .. one at MSP too ... usually means that some other airplane or equipment is WAY too close in the runway .. not a pilot, just too many hours on airplanes.

[motion]

I had one at SNA a couple years back. It was weird, definitely.

[ted]

You should of asked the pilot or call the control tower for an explanation.
A controller issued go around can be for various reasons.
But it is ideally issued early enough where the aircraft can continue flight without touching the runway.

[MT930]

The guys in Jamaica should have gone around!

Your pilots saw that they were long or hot or both and went around.

Someone in another aircraft could have also pulled out on the active runway necessitating an aborted landing aka go-around.

When in doubt Go- Around !


Heres a demo of the wrong choice

[pwd72s]

I'd say that video explains it well.

[skinnerd]

The more I think about it....
landing too far down the runway sounds about right.
Better than ending up in the sand trap (or worse) off the end of the runway.

[javadog]

I had that same thing happen to me once, coming into St, Louis and the reason given, after we got to 10K or so in altitude, was that a plane departing ahead of us was a little slower in getting off of the ground than they thought. If you think about that for a minute, it doesn't give you a warm fuzzy feeling...

JR

[HarryD]

Originally Posted by javadog

I had that same thing happen to me once, coming into St, Louis and the reason given, after we got to 10K or so in altitude, was that a plane departing ahead of us was a little slower in getting off of the ground than they thought. If you think about that for a minute, it doesn't give you a warm fuzzy feeling...

JR

Does not sound like fun. I guess that is why pilots come equipped with "Mark 1 Eyeballs".

[skinnerd]

Originally Posted by javadog

I had that same thing happen to me once, coming into St, Louis and the reason given, after we got to 10K or so in altitude, was that a plane departing ahead of us was a little slower in getting off of the ground than they thought. If you think about that for a minute, it doesn't give you a warm fuzzy feeling...

JR

Sorry....I don't understand the logic here (it's my problem).
Wouldn't that mean we "wouldn't want" to take off again....better to stay on the ground instead?

[rattlsnak]

What kind of airplane was it? Flight number and date?
HIGHLY unusual... Matter of fact, in most airplanes , its prohibited.
How long were you on the ground? 2 sec., 10 sec, ?
Obviously it was some kind of emergency.

[dad911]

Had one at Newark Airport about a year ago. Was told plane in front of us didn't clear runway fast enough. I confirmed with someone that works at the airport, was told it happens.....

[futuresoptions]

Reminds me of the time I was on a twin turboprop job outta college station enroute to Dallas (leaving for dessert storm)... Think there was about 30 people or so on board... anyways turbulence was so bad that even the stewardesses were tossing their cookies... I was the only one that I know of that didn't puke... don't think that they appreciated me laughing at all of them... (I thought we were seriously gonna die so it was more of a "I know were gonna die laugh" more than it was just laughing at them...)

[Porsche-O-Phile]

Captain needed to log two in order to stay current? *shrug*

Big jets don't exactly respond instantaneously. I've heard stories about guys in heavy airplanes getting to DH, making the decision to go missed and actually executing a T&G because it takes time for the airplane's momentum to be redirected from a descent into a climb (and for the engines to respond, although the "spool time" on newer turbofans is vastly superior to what it was on engines from years past...)

Another possibility that comes to mind is they "floated" and realized they were going to touch down well past the TDZ, meaning the potential for a long roll-out and/or going off the runway, leading them to make the decision to abort the landing and take it around. The classic line is "truck on the runway", which is almost always a B.S. "feel good" for the passengers...

[ted]

Originally Posted by Porsche-O-Phile

The classic line is "truck on the runway", which is almost always a B.S. "feel good" for the passengers...

Had a Delta pilot tell the cabin, "FAA did it to us again" only this time it was a girl in the gally. Found out when a passenger called the tower to complain.

Large airports w/fog or low ceilings might have 20 or 30 go-arounds in a day.

[450knotOffice]

I just did two in a row a few weeks ago during our last big storm in CA. Never saw the runway either time - just the wet inside of a cloud. We hightailed it back to LAX and landed out of an approach to near minimums. In the jet I fly, I can lose an additional 100 feet during a missed approach. If I decide to go missed at 100 feet, I might kiss the runway on the go.

[skinnerd]

We were on the ground no more than 5 secs when the pilot hit the throttles full on, and we hurtling down the runway lifting off again in another 10 secs.

This was a big commercial airliner like an Airbus or 737.
Don't remember the date or flight no.

Rattlesnak sums it up: highly unusual and some kind of emergency.
Really weird and a bit scary.
The whole plane was a buzz.

Not one announcement by any of the flight crew as to why.

Seems to me the only reasonable thing would be they overshot their landing and didn't have enough runway to slow down in time.

[javadog]

Originally Posted by skinnerd

Sorry....I don't understand the logic here (it's my problem).
Wouldn't that mean we "wouldn't want" to take off again....better to stay on the ground instead?

I didn't understand the logic either. All I know is what the pilot told us once we were at altitude again. We did climb at a really steep angle...

JR

[air-cool-me]

Go around's and rejected landings are fine...

passengers should welcome them as a safe alternative to potentially getting hurt.

[Joeaksa]

Originally Posted by dad911

Had one at Newark Airport about a year ago. Was told plane in front of us didn't clear runway fast enough. I confirmed with someone that works at the airport, was told it happens.....

If thats the case, the tower will not clear you to land, so this is not the case here.

Frankly I am at a loss as to what happened here. Once you are down on the runway, TR's and spoilers out and starting to brake, there are very few reasons to go round.

Could have been that they got an unsafe indication light on the nose gear ONLY after touchdown and wanted to go around before it touched down but thats just a guess...

Joe A