A commercial airliner approaches a sun-drenched runway. The tarmac gets closer. Suddenly, the engines roar to life, the nose pitches upward, and the aircraft climbs back into the sky. Within hours, grainy smartphone footage surfaces on social media. Cue the sensationalized headlines screaming about a "dramatic maneuver," a "terrifying near-miss," or a "flight from hell."
This exact sequence played out recently when a Jet2 flight from the UK aborted its landing in Lanzarote. The mainstream media treated it like a brush with catastrophe. The public swallowed the narrative whole.
They are all entirely wrong.
An aborted landing—known in the aviation industry as a go-around—is not a sign of failure. It is not an emergency. It is a sign of a highly competent flight crew executing a routine, deeply practiced safety protocol. The true danger in commercial aviation is not the pilot who decides to go around; it is the stubborn pilot who forces a bad landing just to stay on schedule.
The Fallacy of the Perfect Landing
The travel media operates on a flawed premise: every flight should follow a perfectly linear path from point A to point B without deviation. If a pilot deviates, the media assumes something went catastrophically wrong.
Let's dissect what actually happens during a stabilized approach. Airlines operate under incredibly strict parameters defined by Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs). As an aircraft descends through 1,000 feet in instrument conditions, or 500 feet in clear visual conditions, the flight crew checks a mental and physical checklist:
- Is the aircraft configured correctly (flaps and gear down)?
- Is the airspeed within the strict target window (usually target approach speed plus or minus a few knots)?
- Is the descent rate stable (typically under 1,000 feet per minute)?
- Is the aircraft aligned perfectly with the runway centerline?
If the answer to any of these questions is "no," the pilot flying does not try to fix it on the fly. They do not "muscle" the plane onto the tarmac to save face. They push the thrust levers forward, call out "Go around, flaps," and climb away to try again.
I have spent decades analyzing flight data and speaking with commercial captains. The consensus is unanimous: a go-around is a non-event. It is as routine as a driver braking when a traffic light turns yellow instead of trying to gun it through the intersection. Yet, when a pilot exercises this extreme caution, the internet treats it like an action movie stunt.
Why Lanzarote is a Magnet for Tabloid Sensationalism
The specific incident in Lanzarote highlights another layer of media ignorance: geographical and meteorological reality. Canary Island airports, including Lanzarote (ACE) and Madeira (FNC), are famous for challenging wind profiles. Wind shear, mechanical turbulence from nearby terrain, and sudden shifts in wind direction are completely standard for these regions.
When the Jet2 aircraft encountered unstable conditions near the ground, the crew did exactly what they were trained to do. They rejected a potentially unstable touchdown.
Imagine a scenario where a pilot ignores a sudden 15-knot tailwind shift at 200 feet just to avoid making the news. The aircraft lands long, hydroplanes on the runway, and overruns the tarmac into the rocks. That is a real disaster. The Jet2 crew chose the boring, safe, and professional alternative. They chose to fly the airplane safely back into the sky, burn a little extra fuel, and come back around for a textbook landing.
The media calls that "dramatic." Pilots call that Tuesday.
Dismantling the "Terrified Passenger" Narrative
Why do passengers panic during a go-around?
Passengers panic because of a lack of sensory context. Human bodies are terrible at judging motion without visual cues. When the engines suddenly spool up to maximum takeoff thrust, the sudden G-forces press passengers back into their seats. The steep climb angle makes it feel like the plane is looping backward.
Combine that physical sensation with the sudden loss of visual contact with the runway, and the brain fills in the gaps with terror. The fear is real, but the danger is entirely fictional.
Is a go-around dangerous?
Statistically, a go-around is one of the safest maneuvers a pilot can perform. According to data from the Flight Safety Foundation, forcing an unstable approach is a primary contributing factor in nearly half of all approach and landing accidents globally. Conversely, executing a go-around eliminates that risk entirely. It resets the scenario, giving the crew time, altitude, and space to evaluate the weather and execute a clean approach.
Why don't pilots warn passengers beforehand?
This is a major source of passenger grievance. "The pilot didn't say anything until ten minutes later!"
During a go-around, the flight deck follows a strict hierarchy of tasks known as Aviate, Navigate, Communicate.
- Aviate: Fly the airplane. Control the pitch, thrust, and configuration.
- Navigate: Follow the published missed approach procedure, which dictates exactly what heading and altitude to fly to clear any obstacles or terrain.
- Communicate: Talk to Air Traffic Control to coordinate entry back into the traffic pattern.
Talking to the passengers in the back comes fourth on a list of three priorities. A pilot will not pick up the PA system to soothe nervous flyers while they are actively managing an aircraft's transition from a descent to a high-performance climb. You want your pilots focusing on the controls, not their public speaking skills.
The Cost of the Clickbait Cycle
This constant sensationalism has real-world consequences. When the media vilifies standard safety procedures, it creates an insidious psychological pressure on flight crews.
While commercial pilots are highly disciplined professionals, they are still human. If every go-around results in viral TikTok videos, panicking phone calls from relatives, and sensationalized local news articles, it creates a subtle, subconscious pressure to "get the plane on the ground" on the first attempt. This is known in aviation psychology as "get-there-itis." It is a killer.
The aviation industry spent decades building a safety culture that actively encourages pilots to reject bad landings. We must protect that culture from the ignorant court of public opinion.
The downside to this contrarian view is obvious: it does not make for exciting news. A headline reading "Flight Crew Safely and Correctly Executes Standard Go-Around in Gusty Winds" will not generate millions of clicks. It will not trend on social media. But it has the distinct advantage of being true.
Next time you see a video of a plane climbing away from a runway, stop looking for drama. Look for the professionalism. Celebrate the roar of the engines, because it means the system is working exactly the way it was designed to. Stop demanding dramatic narratives from a process designed to be as boringly safe as humanly possible.
