Missed Approaches

Source: www.pilotworkshop.com, Featuring Doug Stewart

You have to establish minimums for yourself. And you have to be ready to say, Oops, this just went below my minimum. It's a no go.

Whether it's precision or non-precision. Missed approaches - how many times are you going to go back and fly that missed?

For me personally, if I have to go missed once, I'll go back. I'll try it one more time. But my personal minimum is if I have to miss the second time, I'm out of there.

I'm not going to go back, because we just set up that scenario for us...

Well, we'll just do a little duck under here.

We'll take it 50 feet lower this time.

That's not going to hurt anything. I know they've got obstacle clearances built into this approach, so what's another 50 feet?

This is my backyard. I know all the mountains around here.

So missed approaches - how many will you do before you say, I'm out of here?

Same thing with your take off minimums. Some pilots are going to blast out of there zero-zero. Well great. If everything works, not a problem. But what if you have a failure of some kind? Electrical? Vacuum? Mechanical? And you've taken off zero-zero, where are you going? You're not going to get back into the airport.

So establishing your take off minimums, again, within your realm of personal acceptance of these risks. We always think just the landing and the approach. Take off as well.