I must admitt that after some 400+ flights and way over 800k miles in the last 7 years, now came a situation that indeed did scare me a lot. I know, as a FT'er, I should have been totally relaxed, asked for another refill of red wine and just played it easy, but heck....things like these don't happen very often, even to heavy frequent flyers. Before this specific flight, I have already experienced two go-arounds, an engine failure after take-off, an aborted take-off and some other minor issues, but this incident was just way beyond everything else. Actually, after we finally landed, I asked myself right away: "Where is weero seated??"

Here is the story:

I took a LH flight from MUC to TXL together with Mrs. berlinflyer.
Take-Off in MUC was already pretty bumpy, but nothing to write home about. During the cruise flight, they had to stop the service due to heavy turbulences. These turbulences continued all the way during the approach into TXL. Other than that, the landing continued normally. We were already over the edge of the runway when all of the sudden, the pilot powered the engines up and off we were again - a Go-Around.

Well, after two minutes the pilot came on to tell us the procedures and informed us about the reason for the go around: 10 knots tailwind, which is too much for the a/c. He also informed us that he requested TXL Tower to change the direction of landing, which they confirmed.

After about 10 minutes of crusing, we started another approach. But wait a minute, aren´t we coming in from the east again? Yes, indeed. I could cleary see that we took the same approch as a while ago. The flaps came out, the gear was lowered and then: full power again, this time about 10 seconds before touch down: our second Go-Around!

The pilot took a sharp 180° left turn and climbed rapidly. He came on again to tell us that by now, he was really, really mad about TXL airport authorities. Instead of changing the landing direction, they forced him to try again to land from the eastern direction, this time we experienced almost 20 knots of tail wind!!

He told us that he made the decision to fly to HAJ (Hannover) now as it would not be safe to try another approach in TXL. by now, a lot of people were pretty nervous and the great crew tried the best they could to calm everybody down.

The flight from TXL to HAJ took about 20 minutes, followed by another bumpy approach but this time a very smooth landing. After well over 2 hrs we had finally arrived on the ground again!

Once there, we were directed to a remote stand and informed by the pilot, that he would give us more details in a little bit regarding the next arrangements.

After five minutes we were informed to stay onboard, as they were refuelling the plane with enough fuel for some more approaches into TXL!!!!

He was really sure that he wanted to fly back to TXL and try some more landing there!

For me, Mrs. Berlinflyer and some more passangers, this was way too much for one night. We decided to leave the plane right there, even though the pilot and f/o tried to talk us into staying on board.

But with no success: We decided to leave the a/c. The local flight manager at HAJ was great in getting ground transportation for everybody who wanted to leave, including us. ^

Overall, I was just happy to get out of that plane and drove back to TXL in less then 2 hrs via the autobahn.

My next flight will be tomorrow, hopefully with much nicer weather

BTW: Do you think I will get miles for the TXL-HAJ flight?? (just kidding)