Pearson Accountability Alliance

2025 Go-Arounds at Toronto Pearson: Community Evidence Log

---

What are go-arounds?

A go-around is when a pilot abandons a landing at the last moment and climbs away instead of touching down. You may see or hear it as an aircraft that seems about to land, then suddenly powers up, climbs, and “goes around” for another try.

Go-arounds are a standard safety procedure and are part of normal airline operations. Pilots are trained to initiate a go-around whenever something about the approach, the runway, or nearby traffic does not look or feel safe enough to continue the landing.

Common reasons include:

• Unstable approach (too fast, too high, not properly lined up)
• Sudden change in wind or visibility
• An aircraft, vehicle, or animal still on the runway
• Air traffic control spacing issues with other aircraft
• Technical or cockpit concerns that make a conservative decision safer

---

Why track them?

It is important to be clear:
Not every go-around is a “near miss” or a narrowly avoided collision.
Most are pilots and controllers doing the right thing—choosing a conservative option rather than forcing a marginal landing.

However, go-arounds still matter for several reasons:

• They usually happen at low altitude, when everyone’s workload is high and there is less room for error.
• They can reflect underlying problems: congestion, runway occupancy, aggressive scheduling, or procedure design.
• They create additional noise and fuel burn over the communities below.
• In some cases, the same conditions that trigger a go-around (poor spacing, runway conflicts, confusion on frequency) could, if not managed correctly, lead to serious incidents or tragedy.

By documenting every recorded go-around at Toronto Pearson—date, time, runway, aircraft type, and where possible a radar screenshot—this project is not claiming that each event was unsafe on its own. Instead, it:

• Shows how often these high-workload, high-risk moments occur,
• Helps identify patterns (time of day, runway, traffic configuration), and
• Provides an independent evidence base for communities, regulators, and investigators to ask whether current traffic levels and procedures are as safe and responsible as they should be,
• Creates a community-held record that can be compared against the Transportation Safety Board of Canada’s October 15 report — the same report that effectively told Transport Canada to stop looking the other way and act on the risks it already knows about.

Transport Canada has the statutory authority and responsibility to keep both the people flying and the communities on the ground safe. When, after an October 15 TSB report, they still allow this level of concentrated traffic, chronic go-arounds, and relentless noise exposure to continue, they are no longer “unaware.” They are making an active choice to leave people in a situation of ongoing, preventable harm that many residents experience as day-to-day torment.

---

How to read the go-around tables

Each row in the tables below represents one recorded go-around event at Toronto Pearson in 2025. These are the columns you’ll see:

• Event # – A simple counter for that month (Event 1, 2, 3…). It’s just an internal ID so we can refer to a specific go-around.
• Date/Time (Local) – When the go-around occurred, shown in local time. This helps reveal patterns by time of day (overnight, early morning, peak rush, etc.).
• Dep/Arr – Whether the aircraft was departing (D) or arriving (A). Most go-arounds involve arrivals, but departures can also be affected by traffic or runway conflicts.
• Aircraft Type – The aircraft model (for example B38M, A320, GL5T). This shows whether events are concentrated in particular aircraft categories.
• Runway – The runway in use at the time (for example 05, 06R, 23, 24L). This matters for which communities are directly under the flight paths of these events.
• Screenshot – A link to a radar screenshot captured at or near the time of the go-around. These images give a visual record of aircraft position, track, and surrounding traffic.

---

For broader issues with how Pearson’s noise and complaints are recorded, see our page on Noise Monitoring Failures & Data Integrity at Toronto Pearson Airport .

---