A new aviation safety initiative launched September 1, 2026 with a straightforward premise: pilots don’t go around often enough, and the reason usually isn’t training — it’s culture. Go-Arounds Are Awesome!, founded by Jim Pitman and based in Phoenix, aims to reframe the decision to discontinue an unstable approach as evidence of sound aeronautical decision-making rather than a failed landing. The campaign targets a well-documented hazard: continuing an unstable approach contributes to runway excursions, hard landings, and loss-of-control accidents, and pilots often press on despite knowing better.
The campaign’s central argument is worth taking seriously, because it identifies a gap that procedural training alone doesn’t close.
The Problem Isn’t That Pilots Can’t Go Around
Every certificated pilot has been taught the go-around. It’s a required maneuver on the practical test, it’s practiced in training, and the mechanics — power, pitch, configuration, positive rate — are well understood.
That’s precisely what makes the accident record puzzling. Pilots who know how to execute a go-around, and who can recognize an unstable approach when they see one, still continue approaches they should abandon.
Pitman’s framing gets at why: “Pilots are wired to complete the mission.”
That orientation is generally a virtue. It’s what gets people through training, through difficult cross-countries, through weather that requires patience. But it becomes a hazard on short final, where the mission-completion instinct argues for salvaging an approach that should be discarded.
The campaign’s core observation is that training teaches pilots how to execute a go-around, while culture determines whether they actually will. Procedures address capability. They don’t address the reluctance.
The Human Factors Behind the Reluctance
Several documented psychological patterns push against the go-around decision:
Plan continuation bias. The tendency to persist with an original plan even as conditions change and the plan becomes less appropriate. It intensifies as you get closer to completion — which is exactly why it peaks on short final.
Sunk cost reasoning. You’ve flown the whole approach. Abandoning it feels like discarding the work, even though the previous minutes are gone regardless of what you decide next.
Normalization of deviance. This is the one the campaign specifically names. Every marginal approach that ends in an acceptable landing teaches a quiet lesson that marginal approaches work out. Repeated success at flying slightly unstable approaches recalibrates what feels normal, until genuinely unsafe conditions no longer trigger alarm.
External pressure. Passengers waiting, a schedule, fuel, an instructor watching, other traffic in the pattern, or simple embarrassment about going around in front of people on the CTAF.
Self-assessment. Perhaps the most corrosive factor: many pilots interpret a go-around as an admission that they mishandled the approach — a verdict on their skill rather than a decision about the next thirty seconds.
That last one is what the campaign is built to attack.
The Reframe
The name is deliberately lighthearted, and the campaign is explicit about what it’s trying to replace.
The reluctant version: “Oh no, I think I need to go around.”
The version the campaign wants: “I get to do a go-around and set up a better approach.”
That’s a small shift in language describing a significant shift in self-concept. The first framing treats the go-around as a penalty imposed by a mistake. The second treats it as a choice made by a pilot in command of the situation — which is what it actually is.
A go-around is not evidence that something went wrong. It’s evidence that a pilot noticed something wasn’t right and did something about it. Those are opposite conclusions drawn from the same event.
What a Stabilized Approach Actually Requires
The go-around decision only works if a pilot has criteria for recognizing when it’s warranted. That’s what stabilized approach parameters provide.
The specifics vary by aircraft and operation, but the general concept is that by a defined gate on final, the aircraft should be:
- On the correct flight path
- At the appropriate airspeed for the configuration
- In the landing configuration — gear, flaps, and trim set
- At an appropriate and consistent rate of descent
- With power set appropriately for the profile
- Requiring only small corrections to maintain the profile
The operative principle is that if the approach isn’t stabilized by the gate, or becomes unstabilized afterward, the correct response is a go-around — not an attempt to recover the profile below a few hundred feet.
Establishing personal gate criteria before flight, when you aren’t under pressure, is what makes the decision executable in the moment. A pilot who has decided in advance that a particular airspeed or sink rate triggers a go-around has converted a judgment call into a rule.
What the Campaign Asks
At GoAroundsAreAwesome.com, pilots are invited to do three things:
- Learn about stabilized approaches and go-arounds
- Sign the Go-Around Pledge
- Share the site with other pilots and instructors
The pledge component is more interesting than it might appear. Public commitment is a well-established behavioral mechanism — a pilot who has stated a position on go-arounds has given themselves something to be consistent with, and consistency pressure works in favor of the safer decision rather than against it.
What Instructors and Flight Schools Can Do
The campaign explicitly targets instructors and schools, and that’s where cultural change is most achievable.
Praise the go-around. When a student goes around, the instructor’s reaction sets the meaning. “Good call” and “nice decision” build a different pilot than a sigh and a comment about the pattern getting busy.
Fly them when they’re not required. Practicing go-arounds only as a demonstrated maneuver teaches them as a test item. Initiating them from genuinely unstable approaches teaches them as a decision.
Model it. Students learn most from what their instructor does. An instructor who goes around when appropriate, and says why, transmits more than any briefing.
Give students go-around criteria. Specific gates and parameters, established in advance, remove the in-the-moment judgment burden.
Watch the language. “You should have gone around there” frames it as a failure to avoid. “What would have made you go around?” frames it as a decision to make.
Debrief the ones that didn’t happen. Approaches that were continued and probably shouldn’t have been are the most valuable debrief material available, and they’re routinely skipped when the landing came out acceptable.
The Bottom Line
Go-Arounds Are Awesome! is targeting something real. The gap between what pilots know about go-arounds and what they actually do isn’t a knowledge problem — it’s a cultural and psychological one, driven by plan continuation bias, sunk cost reasoning, external pressure, and the persistent sense that going around means you got it wrong.
Reframing the go-around as evidence of good decision-making rather than evidence of a bad approach is a small change in how pilots think about a maneuver they already know how to fly. Whether a campaign can shift that culture is an open question — but the diagnosis is sound, and the intervention costs nothing to adopt.
The next time an approach doesn’t look right, the useful thought isn’t “I think I need to go around.” It’s “I get to go around and do this properly.”
More information is available at GoAroundsAreAwesome.com.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the Go-Arounds Are Awesome! campaign? Go-Arounds Are Awesome! is an aviation safety initiative founded by Jim Pitman that launched September 1, 2026 in Phoenix. It aims to shift pilot culture so that go-arounds are viewed as normal, positively reinforced decisions rather than failed landing attempts. The campaign provides educational resources on stabilized approaches and go-arounds and invites pilots to sign a public Go-Around Pledge at GoAroundsAreAwesome.com.
Why don’t pilots go around when they should? The barrier is generally psychological rather than technical, since most pilots know how to execute a go-around. Contributing factors include plan continuation bias — the tendency to persist with an original plan as it becomes less appropriate — along with sunk cost reasoning, external pressures such as schedules and passengers, and the normalization of deviance that occurs when repeated marginal approaches produce acceptable landings. Many pilots also interpret a go-around as an admission of poor airmanship rather than as sound decision-making.
What is a stabilized approach? A stabilized approach means that by a defined point on final, the aircraft is on the correct flight path, at the appropriate airspeed, in the landing configuration, at a consistent and appropriate rate of descent, with power set appropriately, and requires only small corrections to maintain the profile. Specific parameters vary by aircraft and operation. The governing principle is that if an approach is not stabilized by the defined gate, or becomes unstabilized afterward, the correct response is a go-around.
Why is continuing an unstable approach dangerous? Continuing an unstable approach is a recognized contributing factor in runway excursions, hard landings, and loss-of-control accidents. An aircraft arriving fast, high, low, or misaligned requires corrections close to the ground where there is little margin for error, and attempting to salvage the landing rather than going around removes the option that would have resolved the situation safely.
How can flight instructors encourage go-arounds? Instructors can positively reinforce go-arounds when students make them, practice go-arounds from genuinely unstable approaches rather than only as a demonstrated maneuver, model the decision themselves and explain their reasoning, provide students with specific stabilized approach criteria established in advance, use language that frames the go-around as a decision rather than a failure, and debrief approaches that were continued when they arguably should not have been.
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