Missed approaches are routine and commonplace. They’re what pilots are trained to do when they believe that the approach to the landing runway is anything other than pristine-perfect. If there’s even the slightest chance that things won’t go according to plan, the pilot should abort the landing, climb away, and start again.

Missed approaches can be declared when the pilot has incorrectly set the aircraft up for the landing; But they can also be a response to a vehicle on a runway, plans knocked awry due to poor weather, the sight of a flock of birds near the landing area, another aircraft which has failed to vacate the runway with appropriately safe margins, as a response to an instruction by the approach controllers, or any number of other reasons ranging from the mundane to the spectacular.

Stigmatizing missed approaches would have a profoundly negative impact on the safety of the Australian public. If a pilot is under pressure to commit to a landing under less-than-ideal conditions to avoid the criticism of a missed approach, sooner or later one of those less-than-ideal landings will go horribly wrong.

Wind gusts were peaking at over 45 knots from the west around that time, nothing really uncommon about an aircraft going around if it was copping that much crosswind. Sounds like it was handled well by the pilots, as they are trained to do, otherwise we would’ve been hearing more about it.