Did anyone see the pictures from Seattle showing a plane attempting to land yesterday in the storm. It was moving back and forth like crazy and just before it was going to land, the plane's landing was aborted and it quickly took off again. It was seconds from landing. It must of been terribly scary.

Have you ever been so close to landing and then the pilot aborted and then quickly went back in the air? Pilots, how would you know if it could be done safely and how is it communicated so quickly between the flight crew?

Flying into Raleigh there are occasionally deer on the runway - down you start and up you go.

That is why I hit the loo before landing!

Aborted landings aren't that uncommon. I'm not nearly as frequent a flier as many here, and I've been involved with about 4 of them. I don't worry about it: I know there are procedures and training in place to handle safe go-arounds.

The pilot usually comes over the PA and says something about the guy in front taking his sweet time getting off the runway. Once or twice I've wondered whether that was true or if our pilot simply goofed up the approach. Oh well...

Aborted takeoffs, on the other hand, are a little freaky...

Not that close, but once I was on a plane that aborted a landing while still somewhat far away and did a go-around. Pilot said that a previous plane was slow in getting off the runway in front of him.

As opposed to slowly??????

If I'm not mistaken, as part of the checklist, the PIC (or maybe it's always the captain) gives a briefing that includes the missed approach and go-around procedures so the crew already knows exactly what to do.

The only time it happened to me, it happened twice.

It was a BA 747 flight arriving at LHR from Japan. Both times there were different obstructions on the runway. The pilot announced it was the only time that that had happened in his career.

I had that happen on a little Saab 340 out of LAX to SAN. We taxied normally, ran up the engines, got up to speed rather quickly and just as you would have thought we were about to leave the ground..... airbrakes, reverse thrust and heavy breaking. It is indeed quite unsettling. To be fair, with a Saab 340 on LAX's runway, we still probably were not even half way down the runway when we finally got turned off onto the taxiway again so we were probably a good mile from overrunning the end of the runway, but still kind of disturbing. My real first thought was a mechanical and we would probably be taxiing back to the terminal for a nasty delay that I really did not feel like dealing with at that point having just spent the last 20 hours in airplanes and being a half hour flight from home. Not a word out of the cockpit as we taxied, but instead of back to the terminal, the engines kind of ran up and down a few times and then we taxied back to the start of the runway, turned back on and took off perfectly normally. So then I figured if the aircraft was fine, it must have been some kind of runway incursion, which is even scarier. Only after we had finally climbed to cruising altitude and leveled off did the pilot eventually come on and said something like "sorry about that takeoff, we had a bad oil pressure reading but it turned out to be fine after all." I suspect everyone on the plane would have appreciated a more prompt explanation than was given.

I once had a go around because, at the last minute, some other plane wandered onto the runway. It actually wasn't that scary -- the pilot spooled up, we went up, and it was just like any other takeoff. He got on the PA a few minutes later and told us what had happened.

Could you share where you saw the 'pictures'?

Was on a Malaysia Airlines 744, KUL-LHR, a few years back when we aborted at what can't have been more than 50m above the runway. Amazing the power / climb rate of a 744 with near empty tanks.

Okay here's the link to the video

http://www.komotv.com/home/video/491...?video=pop&t=a

Looks like that was a pretty exciting ride... Look at that rudder move!

few years back I was in a flight that did 3 go arounds at LGA. it was raining pretty hard.. and windy. Nice ride i'd say ...
too bad ..the lady sitting next to me didnt think so.

I was on an AS flight once landing at SFO in a very similar situation to the NW flight - violent rocking sideways, I thought the wing was going to clip the runway. Before we knew it, we were back up in the sky. And as you know, at SFO, if you can see the ground, you are there. Quite scary.

I was once on a UA flight to CLT while listening to Channel 9 (from the flightdeck) when miscommunication between ATC and pilot at about 4 miles final approach had us on wrong parallel runway (L instead of R). ATC slowed other traffic and we quickly banked R to finalize approach to R runway. Nice to be able to listen in and anticipate the quick bank! Kinda scary, though, how miscommunication can and does happen

Pilot's are taught very well from the beginning of their flight training about how and when to do a go around. It's the pilots decision and communication with each other on when to do a go around happens rapidly however its usually to ensure safety. These are very common. I did see the video and with the winter winds here in Seattle blowing I was quite taken by the landing attempt too but the 757 has lots and lots of power so everyone was safe...the pilot made the right decision. I am sure panic must have been on board for some of those people and I bet the pilot even had a goose bump but this is why we rely and on having such good experience in a cockpit for us passengers right? to keep us safe.

In all the commercial flying as a passenger (20+ years) I have had a go around twice - once on USAir since the plane ahead of us did not get off the runway (back in the 80's) soon enough and one just two weeks ago on Alaska airlines with the same issue. Both were 737's