Date: 202009
Local time of day: 1801-2400
Location: YKM.Airport, WA
Flight conditions: Marginal
Weather elements / visibility: Haze / Smoke
Light: Night
Aircraft: Commercial Fixed Wing
Flight plan: IFR
Mission: Passenger
Flight phase: Final Approach
Airspace: Class E ZSE
ATC / advisory: CTAF YKM
Reporter function: Pilot Flying; Captain
Reporter qualification: Flight Crew Multiengine; Flight Crew Instrument; Flight Crew Air Transport Pilot (ATP)
Human factors: Situational Awareness; Workload
Anomaly: Deviation / Discrepancy - Procedural Published Material / Policy; Inflight Event / Encounter Weather / Turbulence; Inflight Event / Encounter Unstabilized Approach
Detector: Person Flight Crew
When detected: In-flight
Result: Flight Crew Executed Go Around / Missed Approach
Contributing factors: Airspace Structure; Human Factors; Environment - Non Weather Related; Weather
Primary problem: Airspace Structure

Narrative: Enroute from ZZZ to YKM last flight of the day.  Night conditions with smoke. Tower and Approach Control were closed. I was pilot flying.  Route was planned over V298 through DATVE intersection.  This route took us through a TFR due to fires northwest of Yakima.  Approaching DATVE; we got discretion to 11000 ft; and requested RNP RWY 9 starting at DATVE.  At first Seattle Center told us we may need to hold because of another airplane on another approach into Yakima; we told him we could do that; but he told us to do a right 360 and that we would be able to proceed inbound after that.  After making the turn we were told to track the approach inbound and were cleared down to 8500 ft; then 8100 ft.  Due to the TFR he couldn't clear us lower.  When he finally cleared us for the approach; we ended up really high but we elected to configure early and continue with the approach.  We had to use VS mode to descend because we could not get the VNAV linked being so high.  We protected the airplane with the altitude alerter and ALT SELECT for each segment.  When we cleared the smoke and could see the airport we were approaching YINUL and we noticed we were still quite high. At this point we were set up gear down and flaps 15 but I thought I had called for flaps 35.  We were not sure if we would be able to make it so we told Center we may need to come around for another approach.  A moment later we noticed the glidepath coming in so we elected to continue with a visual approach.  The controller re-cleared us for a visual and we switched to CTAF.  At some point we set the altitude alerter to field elevation and continued.  Thinking I was already at flaps 35 I called for below the line at the 1000 ft chime.  Right around the '500' call we got the aural warning 'TOO LOW - FLAPS' and I called for and executed a missed approach.  As we were climbing I elected to fly a visual left hand traffic pattern back to Runway 9 instead of the published missed approach procedure to avoid going back up into the smoke layer.  We set the alerter to 2600 ft and went around; but ended up climbing to about 4000 for extra safety margin.  We reactivated the approach for final approach guidance; turned base at about 3.5 miles and landed without incident on RWY 9. The flight from ZZZ to YKM is very quick.  Especially landing to the East.  I usually landed on 27 so was not as familiar with the approach to RWY 9 but we did note the high approach angle of 3.5 Deg.  And briefed it thoroughly.  The approach felt uncomfortably high; which led to us being distracted.  I was thinking about the potential missed approach and we missed the fact that the airplane was not fully configured for landing.  In retrospect we should have told ATC that we want to hold at DATVE until he could fully clear us for the approach once the other airplane landed. That would have given us enough time to get everything set and avoid distractions and time compression.  The other thing we could have done is requested vectors to the south and to start the approach from YKM VOR.  Or we could have set up for RWY 27 since the winds were almost a direct crosswind slightly favoring Runway 9 and under 10 kts.  The other thing I would do different next time at night is to fly the published missed approach procedure because of the terrain.  I felt comfortable with my knowledge of the terrain in Yakima; but flying the traffic pattern at night on the missed added another layer of risk that we didn't need at that point.




Synopsis: Captain reported commencing approach too high due to TFR; resulted in unstabilized; misconfiguration to a go around followed by visual maneuver at night in high terrain.