It’s a moment you probably won’t forget. After your instructor handed back your signed logbook and reached for the cockpit door, he or she reminded you, “If anything about the landing doesn’t look right, just go around.”
You wouldn’t have gotten that solo endorsement without first convincing your CFI that you could not only tell when to break off an approach to try again, but actually manage it consistently. Still, every year, three or four dozen airplanes and a handful of helicopters are wrecked by pilots unsuccessfully trying to do just that. Somewhere between that first stage check and life after adult supervision, something’s getting lost.
