It’s incredibly common for aircraft to perform go-arounds when attempting to land, given that landing is often a manual process, and pilots are trained to err on the side of caution. Along those lines, a Lufthansa jumbo jet recently performed what can only be described as a rather memorable go around, which is now going viral.
Lufthansa Boeing 747 LAX go around goes viral
Airline Videos Live captures an incident that happened on Saturday, October 10, 2026, at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX). It involves a Lufthansa Boeing 747-8 with the registration code D-ABYK, which was just completing its flight from Frankfurt (FRA).
The plane was cleared to land on runway 24R, the airport’s most northerly and shortest runway. As you can see, the approach looks pretty stable, though perhaps they came in with a bit too much speed, because the plane “floated” for a while.
Runway 24R at LAX is 8,926 feet long, which is plenty long for a 747 to land, but doesn’t necessarily leave that much buffer. You’ll see the signs with numbers along the side of the runway, and those represent the number of feet left on the runway, in thousands (so the “7” number means that there are 7,000 feet of runway left).
As you can see here, the plane touched down around one-third of the way down the runway, with just under 6,000 feet remaining. Clearly the pilots weren’t quite comfortable with that, so even though the rear wheels touched the runway, the pilots immediately decided to abort the landing.
The thing is, they pulled the nose back quite a bit and very quickly, and the tail came dangerously close to touching the runway. Clearly the plane was within feet of having a tail strike, and possibly even less than that. The plane then performed a go around, and landed without incident around 15 minutes later, once again on runway 24R.
This was a close call for a tail strike, probably not dangerous
My assumption would be that the pilots performed a go around because they were just worried they didn’t have enough runway left to stop in time (at least without overheating the brakes), which is fair enough. Of course it’s possible there was another reason as well — we don’t actually know.
I’d note that while this visually appears to have been very close to a tail strike, that doesn’t actually mean that any passengers were in danger. Planes can sustain some pretty nasty tail strikes without it posing a major risk to an aircraft.
In some situations, a tail strike may just require an inspection, and the plane can then stay in service, even if the plane eventually needs a new coat of paint. In other situations, a tail strike can cause long term structural damage, and potentially ground a plane for months.
For example, an Air France Airbus A350 had a pretty rough tail strike during a go around in Toronto (YYZ) in early 2024, and the plane ended up staying grounded for around six months before reentering service. Again, no one was injured or in danger, but that’s a costly situation.
Bottom line
A Lufthansa Boeing 747 had a pretty “exciting” go around at LAX. The plane touched down quite late, with only 6,000 feet of runway remaining, and the pilots decided to abort the landing at the last moment. They pulled up on the controls pretty sharply, putting the tail within a very small distance of making contact with the runway.
The plane landed at LAX around 15 minutes later, without incident. This certainly makes for quite the visual, though fortunately there’s nothing else to this, really.
What do you make of this Lufthansa Boeing 747 go around?
Membership is free and takes no more information than commenting as a guest. Earn status points for good contributions, and see fewer ads as your status grows.