How to Fly a Holding Pattern
How to…. Fly a Hold by Jacques Zahar, CFI
(Note this page is best viewed with a 1024X768 resolution) Basically, a Hold is for airplanes like a stoplight for cars. Except that you can’t put the parking brake on in flight…. The purpose is to have the plane wait at a specified part of airspace (“Protected airspace”) until the traffic ahead of your plane is far away enough or has landed. Though Holding instructions are seldom ever used under the Procontroller/Squawkbox virtual ATC environment, on very congested areas (Fly-ins) or simply for practice, it can be interesting both for ATC and Pilot if Hold is accepted and flown.
The purpose of these pages is to give Virtual Pilots a way to fly a Hold manually. This section will be divided into 4 sections: 1- Holding Clearances: How to decipher holding clearances 2- Types of entry: Depending on your location, how to enter a holding pattern properly 3- Flying a Hold: Principles of holding 4- Exiting a Hold: What to do next? Before having a look at holding clearances, let’s see the basic elements of a Holding pattern : Without crosswind, a Holding pattern is like a racetrack:
See the arrows? They indicate the turn direction. A holding pattern with right turns is called a standard hold, one with left turns is called a non-standard hold. This is important to know, as some ATC can say “standard” instead of “right turns” or assume that the hold will be standard if they don’t specify the direction of the turns. See also the inbound leg: this is the leg to which ATC refers to when giving the clearance, it is always going to and finishing at the holding fix. The inbound leg should be flown for ONE minute if below 14000 feet or ONE ½ minute if above 14000feet unless otherwise specified. The outbound leg is not timed and depending on the wind can take more or less time than the inbound leg.
Note that ATC can also give DME Holds, in which case ATC will specify the
(Note this page is best viewed with a 1024X768 resolution) Basically, a Hold is for airplanes like a stoplight for cars. Except that you can’t put the parking brake on in flight…. The purpose is to have the plane wait at a specified part of airspace (“Protected airspace”) until the traffic ahead of your plane is far away enough or has landed. Though Holding instructions are seldom ever used under the Procontroller/Squawkbox virtual ATC environment, on very congested areas (Fly-ins) or simply for practice, it can be interesting both for ATC and Pilot if Hold is accepted and flown.
The purpose of these pages is to give Virtual Pilots a way to fly a Hold manually. This section will be divided into 4 sections: 1- Holding Clearances: How to decipher holding clearances 2- Types of entry: Depending on your location, how to enter a holding pattern properly 3- Flying a Hold: Principles of holding 4- Exiting a Hold: What to do next? Before having a look at holding clearances, let’s see the basic elements of a Holding pattern : Without crosswind, a Holding pattern is like a racetrack:
See the arrows? They indicate the turn direction. A holding pattern with right turns is called a standard hold, one with left turns is called a non-standard hold. This is important to know, as some ATC can say “standard” instead of “right turns” or assume that the hold will be standard if they don’t specify the direction of the turns. See also the inbound leg: this is the leg to which ATC refers to when giving the clearance, it is always going to and finishing at the holding fix. The inbound leg should be flown for ONE minute if below 14000 feet or ONE ½ minute if above 14000feet unless otherwise specified. The outbound leg is not timed and depending on the wind can take more or less time than the inbound leg.
Note that ATC can also give DME Holds, in which case ATC will specify the