Originally Posted by
LarryJ
The risk of a mechanical problem does not increase after a go-around. The same failure is just as likely before the first approach.
If a crew member is incapacitated, an emergency will be declared and ATC will make a big hole for the landing. If they don't, you'd land anyway. We can see the other airplane out the window and avoid it.
All fuel tanks have two fuel pumps. By the time you're landing, the center tanks are dry. Each pump in a tank is powered by a different electrical bus. The engines can suction-feed tank-to-engine if both pumps were to fail on the same tank.
It would be nice if ATC were perfect. They are not, and they will never be. The system is designed to have multiple levels of safety with backups for every identified threat and failure. That is why airplanes are sent around when they don't have 6,000' and airborne, on the preceding departure, or clear of the runway, on the preceding arrival. Neither situation puts the airplanes in dangerous proximity to each other and both provide a robust safety margin, as has been demonstrated by the rather significant errors that have led to runway incursions, which this incident was not, in the first half of this year.
I can't tell if this is the corporate pilot assuring his passengers that all is well, or, if it truly is what is believed.
Everything has an MTBF. Every additional minute of use gets one closer to the F. So by definition there is more risk of failure during a given flight when a go-round (or any additional flight time) is required. Perhaps it is a minute, unmeasurable amount of additional risk, but, there is an additional risk. I'm not a pilot but I hear many times pilots speak of the highest risk during takeoffs and landings. Seems to me aborting one landing therefore requiring a second introduces risk. I've been on at least one go-round and remember the pilot apologizing for not letting us know what was going on earlier, but, they "were a bit busy up here". I think someone up thread used similar language. That tells me there is a lot that pilots need to do in those situations, I don't see how there isn't an increased risk of human error during a given flight when you add a whole bunch of human pilot activity to a flight.
I get that we're all probably still safer in the plane doing a go-round than we are in a car leaving the airport after we land. But the implication that there isn't increased risk just doesn't add up to me. Seems to me the safest thing is to get the passengers, crew and plane on the ground as soon as possible, not adding additional ascent, descent, and flight time due to multiple go-rounds.