Curious, I asked AI how the UK compares to continental Europe…
“In general, Continental Europe tends to have more operational flexibility with overshoot reversals than the UK, but safety standards remain high across all.”
Comparisons to buses early also lead me to think about planes.
When a pilot performs a go-around—essentially a “missed stop” in the sky—it’s treated as a normal, safe, and trained-for manoeuvre. No drama, no shame. It may be logged, but rarely is it considered an incident unless something truly went wrong.
By contrast, on the UK railway, if a train overshoots a platform by a few metres, the response often becomes a minor operational crisis: permission needed, movement frozen, passengers delayed, and complex signalling involvement. A reversal that takes seconds to execute becomes a procedural mountain.
Why this difference? The pilot’s go-around is accepted as part of the real-time judgment space—trained, rehearsed, and often celebrated as evidence of professionalism. On the railway, however, overshooting a platform—often due to human factors like braking misjudgment or slippery rails—is seen as something that must be quarantined by layers of protocol.
Aviation embraces the idea that errors in judgment happen, and what matters most is the safe response, not bureaucratic accountability. Rail in the UK seems to focus on control and containment, often at the cost of operational fluidity.
Both industries are safety-critical. Yet, rail’s culture can sometimes drift into over-management, where procedural purity overrides common sense—whereas aviation leans on well-trained autonomy, trusting the front-line operator to resolve an issue promptly, then discuss it later if needed.
A go around in aviation is often due to an unstabilised approach. The pilot(s) realise the parameters required for a safe landing are not met and essentially go back into the sky to start from scratch. Sometimes those parameters may be due to external issues such as traffic on the runway or the pilots haven’t been able to configure the aircraft properly to be certain of executing a safe landing. This could again be due to external issues such as crosswinds but equally a lapse in judgement from the pilots such as carrying too much speed. As mentioned they are well trained to spot and make that decision.
In a train the option isn’t to have a full re-attempt immediately as the train must stop first. So once a driver realises the train is unlikely to perform a safe stop they must apply the emergency brake and essentially hope that the train stops in time. Like an aircraft the reason could be external (adhesion etc) or due to the driver (lapse in concentration etc).
As for the railway response treating an overrun as a serious incident as opposed to a go around invoking no shame or drama and trusting the frontline operator to make the decision and talk about it later.
The reason for this is the go around would be generally viewed as a safe course of action in the conditions. The same as a driver losing time due to additional running brake tests and braking earlier in autumn. The drivers judgement would be trusted.
But with an overrun, the decisions made have already been insufficient to prevent the incident. Rather like a go around because a pilot has forgotten to select the gear down and realises too late.
Many stations have a signal on the end so overruns are viewed as potential precursors to possible SPADs. Basically management think “our driver has failed to stop in the correct point on approach to this station. We should look into whether there are any issues with his/her braking technique, lifestyle etc because maybe tomorrow they will fail to stop at the correct point at a signal.”
And a go around wouldn’t always be a no blame issue. If an aircraft was approaching an airfield in a very unstable state (carrying too much speed or not configured correctly, for example having forgotten to put the gear down) I’d expect the pilots would be spoken to about the issue.
Put simply the big differences are that the pilot can use the go around to avoid compounding the incident IF they realise in time which generally they do.
The driver can only use the emergency brake and hope.
But the pilot managers can’t simply have the plane stopped to check the pilot(s) are fit to continue while railway management can.
They similar issues psychologically and from a non technical skills viewpoint but not directly comparable.
Car driving, bus driving, truck driving, train driving, marine vessel handling and aircraft piloting all share many similarities but cannot usually be used as direct comparisons.
For example a large ship approaching a port off course due to whatever reason could be depending on the circumstances like an aircraft and “go around” turning back out to sea and returning. But if a channel is surrounded by shallow water they may need tugs. And if they aren’t available it may be drop an anchor as an emergency move and now they’re more like the train.
But even then there will be considerations that apply only to ships that trains/buses/aircraft and their management wouldn’t need to consider.
The quoted post does however raise questions as to the correct amount of trust to put in trained individuals. Some drivers feel we are treated like children by management and not trusted. But then management would point to incidents where drivers got things very wrong to point out why they can’t just leave us to it.
Again, the aircraft management don’t have the luxury of having a stopped vehicle to put initial checks in place. The aircraft has to land first.
