Holding Patterns SC

airplane entering holding pattern

Hold On!  Not Sooo Fast!!!

When things get busy in the sky, or the weather gets bad up ahead and ATC needs you to pull over to the side of the road and park that thing for a minute or twenty-five minutes, they will issue you a “hold”.

Since you can’t exactly find a parking space on top of a cloud in the sky, ATC will instead give you instructions to fly in a “racetrack” oval like pattern over specific point (like a VOR or an Intersection).  This way your airplane keeps flying, but basically stays in one place as far as ATC is concerned.  We’ll show you in the following topics exactly:

parking lot in the sky

  • What Holding Patterns Look Like
  • How to enter and exit one
  • What the procedures and rules are for flying in one
  • What it looks and sounds like in the real airplane when ATC gives you holding instructions.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Always Remember: Fuel is Limited, Gravity is Forever….ya can’t fly in circles forever…..

ifr course lesson progression

You’re Getting There!

Almost to College Station!  But you guessed it, there’s holding instructions up ahead.  Pay close attention to the TOPICs ahead and see if you can apply that knowledge to figure out how to hold!