A brief video capturing a UPS Boeing 767 executing a go-around on approach to San Diego International Airport (SAN) offers working pilots a useful real-world reminder of one of aviation's most fundamental safety procedures. The footage, taken by a visitor at the San Diego Air & Space Museum near Balboa Park, shows the widebody freighter pitching up and applying takeoff/go-around (TOGA) thrust rather than continuing its approach to landing. While the original poster did not specify the cause of the missed approach, SAN's runway configuration and its proximity to downtown high-rises, combined with frequent traffic mixing commercial airliners, cargo operations, and general aviation, make go-arounds a routine occurrence at this particular airfield.
For professional pilots, particularly those flying into constrained or high-density airports like SAN, this video serves as a visual case study in why go-around training remains a cornerstone of recurrent simulator sessions and line checks. San Diego's single-runway layout (Runway 27/9) sits in a tight urban corridor, and controllers frequently issue late runway changes, traffic separation instructions, or wind-related directives that can force crews to abandon an approach even when everything appears stable. UPS, like other Part 121 and cargo carriers, trains extensively for exactly this scenario: a stabilized approach that becomes destabilized due to traffic conflicts, wind shear, unstable energy states, or ATC intervention. The clean execution seen in the clip, a positive pitch attitude and audible thrust increase, reflects standard operating procedures that emphasize immediate, decisive action rather than hesitation when a go-around is warranted.
The broader significance of this footage ties into an industry-wide push to normalize go-arounds as a routine, non-punitive outcome rather than a rare or stigmatized event. Safety data from organizations like the Flight Safety Foundation has long shown that unstabilized approaches continue despite go-around criteria being met in a significant percentage of cases, a phenomenon sometimes attributed to "plan continuation bias" among crews. Airlines and cargo carriers have invested heavily in reinforcing a culture where initiating a go-around carries no career risk, and incidents like this one, captured by an ordinary bystander rather than aviation media, demonstrate how visible and public these maneuvers have become thanks to smartphone cameras and platforms like Reddit's aviation communities.
For UPS and other cargo operators specifically, this video also underscores the operational realities of flying large jets into airports not originally designed for widebody freighter traffic. SAN's compact footprint, terrain considerations, and shared airspace with Marine Corps Air Station Miramar and other nearby facilities add layers of complexity that crews must manage daily. Videos like this, while captured incidentally by tourists, contribute to a growing public awareness of the skill and training embedded in even the most routine-seeming flight operations, reinforcing that a go-around, far from signaling a problem, represents the system working exactly as designed.