How to fly a holding pattern

A holding is a racetrack shaped circuit at a radio beacon. You use it to wait: for a delay, for weather, or for your approach slot.

One lap works like this: fly the inbound leg to the station, make a standard 180 degree turn, fly one minute outbound, then another 180 degree turn back onto the inbound. In a standard pattern all turns are to the right. In a nonstandard pattern they are to the left.

You rarely arrive perfectly lined up, so ICAO defines three ways to join the pattern. Which one you fly depends on the direction you arrive from.

The sky around the fix is split into three sectors by a 70 degree line: direct (fly over the fix and turn straight into the pattern), offset (fly outbound at 30 degrees into the pattern, then turn back), and parallel (fly outbound parallel to the inbound track, then turn back through it).

Here is the trick that saves you all the math while you fly toward the station. First work out the outbound heading: the inbound course from your clearance plus 180.

Right turns: place your right thumb on the compass rose about 20 degrees above the 90 degree point, so it lies at roughly the 2 o'clock position. Now find the outbound heading on the rose:

• Between the nose and your thumb: offset entry.
• On the other side of the nose: parallel entry.
• Anywhere below your thumb: direct entry.

Left turns mirror everything: use your left thumb at the 10 o'clock position.

Direct: cross the fix, then turn straight onto the outbound leg. This is the easy one, more than half of all arrivals are direct.

Offset: cross the fix, turn to a heading 30 degrees away from the outbound track on the holding side, fly one minute, then make a standard turn to intercept the inbound course back to the fix.

Parallel: cross the fix, turn to the outbound heading and fly parallel to the inbound track on the outside of the pattern for one minute. Then turn through the inbound track (into the protected side), intercept it, and return to the fix.

The one minute above is the standard leg, and it is what the solution draws for every entry. In a DME hold the pattern's own legs end when the DME reads the published distance instead of on the clock, so the pattern on the map is longer than the entry drawn into it. Same three entries, same shapes.

After the entry you are established. Keep flying neat laps.

Start the timer when you roll out on the outbound leg (or abeam the fix, if you can tell). Fly one minute, then turn back and check the inbound leg time: it should also be about one minute.

Here is our suggestion for the wind corrections. It is only a rule of thumb, not a law, so adjust it to what works for you:

• Drift: take the crosswind component in knots and divide it by two. That is your wind correction angle in degrees on the inbound leg (WCA = crosswind / 2). On the outbound leg use three times that angle to the opposite side (WCA x 3). Three, because you drift for three minutes of every lap: the turn out, the outbound leg and the turn back. Only the outbound leg has any correction on it, so that one minute has to pay for all three. The inbound leg is not counted, you are tracking it.
• Time: with a headwind on the outbound leg fly 1 second longer per knot. With a tailwind on the outbound leg fly 1 second less for every 2 knots.

One altitude rule to know: the one minute outbound leg applies up to 14,000 ft. Above FL140 the outbound leg is 1.5 minutes.

Use SHOW SOLUTION on the map to compare your flown track with the ideal racetrack. Then hide it and fly the next lap on instruments alone.

A standard circuit is four pieces: the inbound leg, a 180 degree turn, the outbound leg, and another 180 degree turn. At standard rate a 180 degree turn takes one minute, so two turns are two minutes on their own, whatever the legs are doing.

With one minute legs that is roughly four minutes a lap. Above 14,000 ft the legs are a minute and a half, so a lap is nearer five. This is the number to give ATC when they ask how long you can hold, and it is the number to work back from when you are told to expect further clearance at a time.

The leg time is measured on the INBOUND leg. That is the one the clearance means, and it is why the outbound leg gets adjusted rather than the inbound one: you fly outbound for whatever it takes to make the inbound leg come out right.

Not every hold is flown on the clock. A DME or RNAV hold gives you a leg LENGTH instead: hold at 12 DME, four mile legs. You fly outbound until the distance comes up, then turn. There is no stopwatch in it at all.

The wind still matters, it just moves. In a timed hold the wind changes how far you get in a minute, so the pattern changes size. In a distance hold the size is fixed by the clearance, and the wind changes how long the leg takes instead. A headwind outbound means a longer wait for the number to come up, not a shorter leg.

The entry is unchanged. The same three sectors, the same three entries, and the entry itself is flown as the ordinary one minute manoeuvre before you settle into the published legs.

A hold is drawn on a chart with a protected area around it, and that area is sized for an aeroplane of a given speed at a given altitude. Fly it faster and your turns get wider, and the pattern stops fitting inside the protection it was designed with. That is the whole reason for the limits.

The published maximum holding speeds differ between ICAO and the United States, and they step up with altitude in both. Check the figures for the airspace you are in rather than carrying one number around. What matters in the aeroplane is simpler: slow to the holding speed BEFORE you get there, not after, because the deceleration has to happen outside the pattern.

Turns in the hold are standard rate, three degrees a second, and capped at 25 or 30 degrees of bank. At higher speeds standard rate would need more bank than that, so the turn opens out and takes longer than a minute. That is expected, not an error.

The holding side is the side the turns are on, and it is the side the protected airspace is mostly on. A standard hold turns right, so the pattern lies to the right of the inbound course as you fly towards the fix. A non standard hold turns left and is a mirror image, and the chart says so explicitly because it is not the default.

This is why the parallel entry exists at all. Arriving from the non holding side, you cannot simply turn into the pattern without swinging out through unprotected air. The parallel entry keeps you on the safe side while you turn around, and the offset entry does the same job from the other sector by cutting across the holding side where there is room.

It is also why entries are worth getting right rather than improvising. An entry flown the wrong way round is not a tidiness problem, it puts you outside the area the hold was drawn to keep you inside.

You leave a hold when you are cleared to, and where you leave from matters. If the clearance is an onward route or an approach, the usual expectation is that you depart from the fix, on the inbound leg, established. Not from halfway round the pattern.

So when the clearance arrives partway through a circuit, the normal thing is to finish the lap to the fix and go from there. If you need something else, say so. Leaving early from an unexpected point is exactly the sort of thing that surprises a controller who is separating you from someone else.

A hold in lieu of a procedure turn is the exception worth knowing: it is flown as a course reversal, and once you are established inbound you continue on the approach rather than going round again.

Deciding the entry too late. The sector is worked out from where you are relative to the inbound course, and that answer stops being useful once you have crossed the fix. Decide on the way in, while there is still time to set the heading bug.

Correcting the wrong leg. The inbound leg is the one the clearance times. Fixing the inbound leg by changing the inbound leg gets you nowhere; you change the OUTBOUND one and let the inbound come out right.

Single drift correction outbound. Outbound you need about three times the inbound correction, because the two turns spend twice as long in the wind as a leg does. Use the same angle both ways and the pattern walks downwind, lap after lap.

Timing from the wrong moment. Start the outbound clock when you roll out on the outbound heading, or abeam the fix, whichever comes later. Starting it in the turn makes every leg short.

Turning the wrong way on a non standard hold. Left hand patterns are rare enough that the hands do the standard thing while the brain reads the chart. Say the turn direction out loud on the way in.