Ah this is where I disagree. If you have a radio failure right on the abandoned landing you need to fly what atc would expect. Your not going missed your going around. And the aim gives us guidance on a go around, especially with lost comms. It's to fly a pattern and land at pattern altitude. You want to go fly some published missed when cleared for a visual and you lose comms, I think your gonna look stupid and have faa scutany.

Now let's say ord is advertising the ils and you call the airport and then fly the published missed after being cleared the visual, that is debatable. However if an airport is advertising a visual I'd be ready to fly a pattern until told to do otherwise. Just my opinion based reading the aim. Straight out to 1500agl and waiting for tower instructions.

 

The other issue that was explained to me is if you go blasting up to 4000 feet your going into different airspace without clearance.

 

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.

 

Pretty sure the SFO charted visuals give you a heading and altitude.

 

Do not fly the MAP when executing a go around after accepting a visual approach. If they tower cannot give you instructions immediately they expect you to fly 1500 AGL closed pattern.

 

Agreed. If, in doing so, you call tower and they don't answer with specific instructions, one could make an argument for lost comm.

 

How is this a question and why are CA's correcting against Company procedure? This is what the Company says to do. It isn't rocket surgery. My company does the same thing. If you're cleared for the ILS (regardless of VMC/IMC) fly the ILS procedures. If cleared for the visual, do that. When tower wants something different, then do that.

Sheesh.

 

In order to be cleared for a visual approach, you need the airport -or- the proceeding aircraft in sight. Assume you lose sight of the proceeding aircraft and elect to go around. Climbing to 1500' AGL puts you in the clouds. Now what. You cannot execute a visual pattern.

Just throwing that out there for discussion.

 

This was my method as well unless there were terrain or special missed/departure considerations. It's one less nuisance alert/knob to twist/distraction. Just don't let it bite you in the ass going into someplace with terrain or obstacles nearby. Truthfully, it helped serve as a check for me so that I at least had some basic SA about the terrain around the airport and how high I wanted to be to avoid it if the tower was slow replying to my go-around.

 

In most cases, at big airports you will have the tower's attention right away if you execute a go around on your own; usually before you could blow through your initial climb out altitude. Usually, you will get an even IFR altitude, not a VFR one since you are still on an IFR flight plan and have to be vectored with other IFR traffic. I have however once seen a WN 737 get assigned 1500 at LGA initially to avoid a chopper over the field just as they went around. I recently did a go around from rwy 22 at LGA and was given 3000 and a right turn out over central park and then the hudson river to get vectored back around. So I would say procedurally do whatever your company and the AIM say as far as what altitude to set, but try to announce the go around as soon as you know you're going to do it and listen for ATC instructions.