Large Transport
Flight Crew Air Transport Pilot (ATP)
Situational Awareness
ATC Issue All Types; Conflict Airborne Conflict; Deviation / Discrepancy - Procedural Published Material / Policy
Flight Crew Took Evasive Action; Flight Crew Executed Go Around / Missed Approach
Aircraft; Procedure
Our aircraft was on short final when tower advised that two aircraft would be cleared for take-off before we landed. My response was 'Really' as I didn't feel there was enough room. We were told to continue. When it became obvious that it was going to be extremely close I told the tower 'A heads up; don't ever do this again'. The aircraft did not leave the runway when the First Officer called; and we flew the missed approach. The situation caused us to be in the missed approach over taking an aircraft that was climbing and we had to reverse our decent to a climb and try to keep an eye on the other aircraft. The distance was extremely close. We got no instruction for our miss until much later in our climb. My biggest complaint was there was absolutely no reason for this. The second aircraft had no one behind them and we had no one behind us. The First Officer and I both thought that this was a controller trying to see what he could get away with and him flexing his control by telling us to continue. There was absolutely no reason for this to have happened.
I First Officer (FO) was Pilot Flying (PF) on a visual approach to runway 36C in CLT during good weather conditions. Upon initial contact with tower we were cleared to land and advised 'traffic departs.' When we were inside a 3 mile final and even as the aforementioned Aircraft Y had not begun it's takeoff roll tower cleared a Aircraft Z into position and notified us there would be two departures. The Pilot Monitoring (PM) transmitted 'seriously?' and tower responded 'yes; continue.' At about 500 feet AGL the Aircraft Y had just lifted off and the tower cleared Aircraft Z for takeoff and said 'give me a good roll' or something to that effect. At this point the PM transmitted 'just a heads up; don't ever do that again.' As we crossed the approach lights the traffic was just past the 3;000 feet markers and the nose was not in the air. There were no instructions from the tower. As we passed through 50 feet and the auto callouts began I could see that the aircraft was still on the runway and was not rotating. I would estimate the aircraft was about 4;000 feet down runway 36C. I made the decision to reject the landing from a very low altitude and announced 'go around; TOGA' and initiated the go-around. After establishing the climb my pitch was around 15 deg so I made a gentle bank to the left to get about a 5 degree offset from the runway in order to visually track Aircraft Z in the lower right corner of my forward window and to diverge from its heading. I did not want to go too far left as traffic was landing on runway 36L. I could see both the Aircraft Y and Aircraft Z ahead and I would guess we had about a 40kt overtake on Aircraft Z as our speed was around 180kts and Aircraft Z was 140-150kts. During the initial go around phase there were no instructions from ATC even as we announced our go around. Finally tower cleared the Aircraft Z to a 330 heading and said 'gimme a good turn' while instructing us to fly runway heading and maintain 3;000 feet ending the conflict. We made one circuit and landed uneventfully on 36L about 10 minutes later. The tower controller apologized and mentioned the obvious that there was not enough room. There was nobody on final and Aircraft Z was the last aircraft of the push so there was no reason whatsoever to force it onto the runway. Both the Captain (CA) and myself spoke with the ATC supervisor who later advised us that our view of the incident was correct and it had been classified as a 'significant event.'I believe the tower controller was a bit over confident that he could move the traffic when there clearly was not enough space. I remember seeing Aircraft Z stopped on the runway behind the Aircraft Y that had just started rolling; and this was at about a 2.5 mile final. CLT is notorious for launching aircraft in front of landing traffic so we are used to landing in jetwash just as the departing aircraft are just lifting off. It's not enjoyable but it is a frequent event in CLT. This case was totally; totally uncalled for.Possible better education to ATC about the landing speed of the [my aircraft]. At flaps 3 normal approach speeds are sometimes 155kts or so and the controller should have taken that into account. CLT is under a lot of pressure to move traffic as it is a very busy airport but that is no excuse for poor decision making and lack of situational awareness once we had commenced our go around. At the very least ATC should have had the Aircraft Z vacate the runway at the next exit.
Flight crew reported going around from 50 feet due to a departing aircraft not having rotated yet. The go around was self initiated and resulted in these two aircraft climbing in close proximity to each other without any direction from the tower.