An aviation safety expert claims hundreds would be alive and some of the worst air disasters avoided if pilots would pull out at the appropriate time.

Research sponsored by the US Flight Safety Foundation has found getting pilots to abort touchdowns if an approach is unsafe is the “the largest, lowest hanging piece of safety fruit” to make flying less hazardous. According to Patrick Veillette, a pilot who teaches and writes about aviation safety, recent crashes which have killed nearly 200 people could have turned out much differently, saying passengers would: “all be walking, talking and alive if they went around.”

Investigators have combed back through crash reports and computer recordings to come up with an alarming finding. Data compiled by Boeing shows flight crews rarely pull out of a landing approach even in low stability, with almost 97 per cent of pilots choosing not to circle around and try again.

It is not entirely the fault ofthe pilot, according to Mr Veillette: “There isn't a commercial pilot who can say, ‘Shame on you, you should have gone around’... we've all been in situations where in retrospect, we should have gone around and didn't.”

Setting up an approach is fundamental, says Rudy Quevedo, director of global programs at the US Flight Safety Foundation: “It's really all physics... you want to be centred on the runway on the correct trajectory, the correct descent rate and the right speed.”

He says a large part of the issue is that protocols for landing are often needlessly strict, leading to pilot complacence. Quevedo says it is similar to low speed limits being ignored by drivers who think they know the road.

“We should expect that if we have a policy, the people should follow the policy,” he said, “but that being said, we need to make sure that the policy is good before we make people follow it. I don't think we're there yet.”

Advisory documents in the US carry the simple but hardly punchy slogan: “If not - GO AROUND!”