I've been on 5 aborted landings (LGAx2, BOS, DCA, MCI). I can say as a passenger, there is nothing fun about it. It adds about 30 minutes to your arrival time and is indeed a safety issue.

I have a friend who is a pilot (private) and I have flown with him a number of times. Each airport has arrival/departure configurations that are hard set based on the winds. This includes not just runway assignments but approach patterns and departure vectoring. If you who fly out of LGA a lot will know that when you take off on runway 13, you vecotor right about 10 degrees and then vector left about 90 degrees there after - it's there to limit proximity to other traffic. Aborted landing also have specific vectors in that are in place for each arrival/departure configuration. Not that complicated for a single runway airport but as soon as you have multiple runways (and crossing ones no less), the permutations get a little ridiculous.

I would highly doubt fly-bys are an accepted practice for retiring pilots - especially at ATL being ridiculously busy. Think of the additional costs as well as most airports having overbooked arrival/departure slots already. If there were any preparations made ahead of time with ATC, you would hear it over the air. If you are really really interested, you can pull the audio for ATL approach/tower and hear the banter between your flight and apporach/tower. When I fly UA, I am glued to ATC (channel 9) for related reasons - like if the pilot is being honest and quick about the updates.