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Word of the Month — Overshoot
By Ian Brown, Editor
November 2020 – It's unclear to me whether this is a clear Canadian vs U.S. variation or not. When I learned to fly my instructor taught me that "overshooting" was a good thing if it looked like the runway was busy. I was taught to move over to the right of the runway, add power and rejoin the circuit. In the U.S. this would be called "going around."
It's good practice for the pilot to tell the traffic that the intention is to "overshoot and rejoin the circuit" in Canada. In the U.S. this would be called "going around and rejoining the pattern." The Aeronautical Information Manual published by Transport Canada certainly refers to "overshoot maneuvers" specifically.
Overshooting in the U.S. means landing beyond the end of the runway. "Going around and rejoining the pattern" is fairly obvious to a Canadian pilot so there is unlikely to be any confusion, but U.S. pilots flying in Canadian airspace might be a bit bemused to hear that someone actually plans to overshoot.
If you really want to confuse yourself, check out our word of the month on the internet. Apparently Canadians' "Overshoot Day" was March 18 in 2019. Overshoot Day marks the day that humanity has used more resources than it can replace in a year. Globally July 29 was Overshoot Day in the same year so Canadians aren't doing that well at conserving resources. Only Kuwait, UAE, Luxembourg, Qatar, and the USA had an earlier Overshoot Day.