John McCain had a hair-raising moment aboard his plane `Straight Talk Air` on Tuesday in the final hours of campaigning when the pilot had to abort a landing in New Mexico, an on-board AFP reporter said.

As the plane came into land at a hilltop airport in Albuquerque on a final campaign stop, the Boeing 737 suddenly accelerated, circled the airport before coming back into land safely a second time.

The pilot explained afterwards that the first landing attempt had been aborted because of traffic on the runway.

Republican candidate McCain, a former Navy pilot, is to finish election day in the city of Phoenix in his home state of Arizona.

His Democratic rival Barack Obama had his own air scare in July when a chartered airliner carrying him was forced to make an unscheduled landing after its flight crew detected mechanical problems.

The jet was diverted to St. Louis, midwestern Missouri, during a flight from Chicago to North Carolina after the pilots noticed problems with pitch controls, which keep the aircraft in level flight.

An inspection on the ground revealed that the rear emergency evacuation slide had deployed inside the tail cone during flight, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) said afterwards.