Originally Posted by Slim11

Many years ago, a Comair crew was violated at KLGA for this scenario. The ATIS stated the approach in use was the LDA-A landing Runway 22. The crew in question briefed the LDA-A and loaded it into the FMS. Approach asked them if they had the runway in sight and they confirmed Runway 22 was in sight. They were cleared for the visual approach for 22.

For some reason, they had to execute a go-around and started to fly the published MAP. They were asked where they were going and replied flying the published MAP.

According to what was reported, they were expected to fly a closed traffic pattern to 1,500 feet AGL since they were cleared for a visual approach. I agree that tower facilities will usually give heading and altitude (ATL and CVG come to mind) to an airplane executing a go-around and many times it's not to an altitude that is 1,500 feet AGL. Sometimes, you ask tower for altitude and heading and they can't answer immediately (LGA and PHF come to mind)...what do you do then?

Now, think about CLT and a visual approach to 18-36C. Do you make a LT across 36L interfering with arrivals or a RT interfering with arriving and departing traffic on 36R? I think ORD has a good idea in this scenario. On ATIS, they publish the ILS for the center runway and visuals of the L-/R-side runways. That tells me ATC expects arrivals to the center runways to fly a published MAP and arrivals to the outside runways to execute a visual go-around.

When a visual approach has been briefed, sometimes a pilot will put in the FAF crossing altitude for the go-around altitude. IMO, there is some logic behind that.

On charted visual approaches, I haven't seen a published MAP. My experience there is limited to DCA (River Visual 19 and MV Visual 1), LGA (River Visual 13 and Expressway Visual 31) and PHL (River Visuals 9L/R and Liberty Visual 27L.