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A go-around, overshoot or missed approach is an aborted landing of an aircraft which is on final approach.
Origin of the term
The term arises from the traditional use of circuits at airfields — a landing aircraft will first join the circuit pattern and prepare for landing in an orderly fashion. If for some reason the pilot decides not to land, he can simply fly back up to circuit height, and complete another circuit — in other words, go around again. The term go-around is still used even for modern airliners, though they do not use traditional circuit patterns for landing.
Reasons for going around
The go-around procedure may be initiated either by the air traffic control or by the captain of the aircraft.
The air traffic controller will instruct the pilot to go around if there is an aircraft, vehicle or object on the runway. The captain will decide to go around if the aircraft is not lined up or configured properly for the approach, a landing aircraft has not cleared the runway, no landing clearance was issued, the runway is not visible by the time the aircraft reaches the decision height because of low visibility, or if other dangerous meteorological conditions are experienced on final approach (strong winds or microbursts).
A go-around in itself does not constitute any sort of emergency.
The go-around procedure
When the captain is instructed, or decides himself to go around, he will apply full power to the engines, adopt an appropriate climb attitude and airspeed, retract landing gear, retract flaps as necessary and follow the published missed approach procedure (a set path to follow in the event of a go-around) or the instructions of the air traffic controller.
Many modern aircraft such as the Airbus series use fly-by-wire systems with go-around modes that automatically set maximum climb power and pitch the aircraft for best performance. On older aircraft, the pilot performs the go-around manually.
References
"Go-around"