The Air Charter Safety Foundation, a non-profit membership organisation devoted to advancing aviation safety, is financially supporting a study designed to reduce aviation accident rates. The Go-Around Study has just launched and is the first of its kind involving single jet pilots. Conducted by the Presage Group on behalf of the Citation Jet Pilots Safety and Education Foundation (CJP Foundation), the study hopes to identify, track and document the reasons why and the ways in which single jet pilots make go-around decisions during flight.

A go-around is the term for an aborted aircraft landing on its final approach to the runway. The manoeuvre can either be initiated by the pilot or requested by air traffic control for a variety of reasons, such as an un-stabilised approach or an obstruction on the runway.

ACSF president Bryan Burns hailed the study and the ACSF's financial support for it: “This is a significant milestone in the continuing effort by aviation groups to help improve safety, reduce accidents and, as a consequence, save lives,” he remarks. Burns adds that he urges all Citation group members to support the study by participating in its survey, which is now in the process of being distributed. “I'm calling upon every active CJP member to fill out and submit this survey. It's 20 minutes of your time that could not be better spent.”

David Miller, the director of programmes and safety education for the CJP Foundation, is equally enthusiastic about the study: “This kind of study has never been conducted before for single piloted jets,” he notes. “It's going to garner a lot of national attention.” Miller also said that, in addition to the human life-saving potential the study promises, it may also aid in reducing insurance costs for aviation businesses and organisations. Miller echoed Burns's appeal for CJP members to actively take part in the survey as soon as possible. “Please help us move the needle; watch out for the questionnaire, which has been sent to the CJP membership this week.”

Dr. Martin Smith, CEO of Presage Group, which is conducting the survey, said his group has been researching and compiling information on the Go-Around policy for more than a decade. “About seven years ago, we completed a study through the Flight Safety Foundation that really examined the pilots' mental model and what was going on in terms of human decision-making on the flight deck and what the drivers for non-compliance were. Since then, we've quantified several million data points on pilot decision-making below 1,000 feet, and our process for unpacking it is to ask the CJP respondents to our survey to recall an event where the aircraft became unstable and they initiated a go-around.”