Today I was on UA590 PDX-ORD.

I was listening to channel 9 throughout the flight (which I love).

We were on final approach to 22R at ORD and just broke out of the clouds around 12:15pm well on final approach probably a mile or 2 from the airport.

There was an Eagle RJ landing on 27R.

The tower ordered us to go around as he said the visibility went below minimums for LAHSO (which I knew stands for land and hold short operations).

I assume that means either the controller or one of the pilots wouldn't be able to see the other aircraft but the visibility didn't seem that bad to me around 12:15pm. In fact we had broken out and were below the clouds with what seemed like decent visibility.

Anyway we were sent back around and up to 5000 feet where were re assigned back to 22R around 20-22 minutes later.

I noticed when we came back in we landed on 22R again but now they were only landing on 27L and not 27R.

I know pilots are probably really busy during this period but it is not like they put us right back on final approach as we did a big circle. I checked on flightaware.com.

I thought sometime in that 20 minutes or so the pilot (or at least he could have quickly called the flight attendant to have him do it) could have made a quick announcement.

Some people are not regular flyers and especially this time of year could be really frightened.

Clearly flying the aircraft safely should be the pilot's priority but is it really that busy to not be able to make a quick announcement?

Most of the time when I've been involved in a go around the pilot usually said at least something quick like "traffic ahead didn't clear the runway at their exit..we will be on the ground in around 10 minutes..."

A time or two I've had pilots wait until or that ground to say something and that isn't ideal but still better than nothing at all.