Regional Jet 200 ER/LR (CRJ200)
Flight Crew Air Transport Pilot (ATP)
Workload; Situational Awareness; Distraction
Deviation / Discrepancy - Procedural Published Material / Policy; Inflight Event / Encounter Unstabilized Approach
Flight Crew Executed Go Around / Missed Approach
Human Factors
We were coming into [the destination] airport. The visibility was reduced due to haze but still good enough for visual approaches. The first officer was acting as the pilot flying on this leg. During the brief; I brought to his attention the possibility of a high-energy descent and the risk of an unstable approach. Our mitigation strategy was to slow down and partially configure the aircraft prior to starting our descent. By the time we were on base (about 15NM from Runway 26 L); we had the gear down and flaps 30. This to me seemed like an overcorrection; however; it was understandable due to the first officer's lack of recent experience coming into this specific airport and his intention to be on the safe side. By the time we were 10 NM out; we were perfectly set on course; glide; and speed. This was a long and slow straight-in approach; during which I was constantly monitoring speed; sink rate and glide. We passed 1000 FT AGL on a very stable glide towards the runway. At 500 FT the stabilized call out took place but shortly after we got a configuration warning (TOO LOW; FLAPS) due to the flaps still being set to 30. At this point; the first officer seemed to panic and asked to check spoilers and select flaps 45 (we were around 400 AGL) to which I responded; 'go around'. We executed a go around and got vectors to an uneventful landing.We were so focused on getting the plane down and stable that we lost track of our configuration. Our mitigation strategy; while it helped us avoid the threat of a high-energy decent; it caused us to forget setting the flaps to 45; and as a result; not performing the before landing check; which only gets triggered by the last configuration call out.This event helped me realize the existence of threat built into our SOP. The point of the before landing checklist is to make sure the airplane is fully configured prior to landing however; this checklist is part of the flaps 45 call out. That means that forgetting the flaps will cause forgetting the checklist that is supposed to check the flaps.
A CRJ-200 Captain reported an unstable approach due to a configuration issue. A missed approach was performed and the subsequent approach and landing was successfully completed.