Flight Crew Instrument; Flight Crew Air Transport Pilot (ATP); Flight Crew Multiengine
Flight Crew Last 90 Days 60; Flight Crew Total 5000; Flight Crew Type 3500
Situational Awareness
Deviation - Altitude Excursion From Assigned Altitude; Inflight Event / Encounter Wake Vortex Encounter; Inflight Event / Encounter Weather / Turbulence
Flight Crew Executed Go Around / Missed Approach; Flight Crew Took Evasive Action
Procedure; Environment - Non Weather Related
During the approach portion; we were given vectors to the final approach; as we were given our final altitude of 2;800 feet to intercept the ILS; we then intercepted the localizer and began our glide slope descent when all of a sudden we encountered severe turbulence and lost altitude in a rapid descent. By the time we started the missed approach; ATC came on the frequency and gave us an altitude alert even though we had started our climb and went missed. My First Officer and I had discussed this on the ground and came to the conclusion that we might have encountered severe turbulence from the previous aircraft that had landed in front of us; a B737. What we've learned from this is that although human factor takes a few seconds to recognize a situation as such; perhaps a quicker reaction towards the turbulence to a missed approach could have been better; also I think ATC was good to promptly advise us of the situation
Light transport Captain reported executing a go-around on approach to MKE when they encountered wake turbulence in trail of a B737.