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World holding record?

Yesterday I did a “short” flight to get a couple of approaches into Avignon LFMV. We ended up going round the hold no less than 12 times, 2 for the first approach and 10 for the second, and our “short” flight lasted just under 2 hours. I wonder if this is some kind of record?

And when we finally did get to land, another plane was briefly stuck on the runway and we had to go round.

Pictures below show the flight track. The two hand-flown approaches are nicely aligned, which is good. I flew the holds on autopilot but manually setting the heading since as far as we can tell my GTN/KFC225 setup won’t fly a hold all by itself unless it’s part of a missed approach procedure – though I’d be delighted to be wrong.


LFMD, France

Nice one @johnh, well done

Not sure it sets any record though… flying the line we happen to pick up a hold for > 2 hours, waiting for the weather to improve, runway to be cleared, or some other surprise.
On my own VFR only field, there is enough traffic as to mandate an approach procedure in the form of a „entry circle“, 500‘ above the TPA, that all aircraft must fly thru before joining the appropriate downwind. The problem is a pretty busy flight school adding to other pilots training, e.g. performing T&Gs… 3 of them are enough to block the pattern, and my own record is 7 merry go round (depicted) following what was a local flight, but we had a MSW Votec going 25X round

PS
All hand flown

Last Edited by Dan at 13 May 16:36
Dan
ain't the Destination, but the Journey
LSZF, Switzerland

hi John

If your system has a GPSSteering setup then it can fly holds regardless of whether they are part of approach procedure or not. The only difference is whether it is already in the database or you need to set it up manually. Two ways to do it then:

A) selecting the waypoint in the fpl and then one of the waypoint options is “hold at waypoint” . When selecting, it will ask you to enter hold details (LH/RH, 1min or more, inbound track…) .
B) activate the FPL leg just prior to the database hold (typically your last missed approach leg) then select DCT to the holding waypoint if that is the rqd routing, then the hold will be automatically activated upon reaching.

Antonio
LESB, Spain

What was the cause of the holds?

flying the line we happen to pick up a hold for > 2 hours

A 2hr hold would have to be planned for, surely?

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

Yes, it was planned… Balkans destination with the usual morning fog and only Cat I equipment (dispatch “yeah we know, take enough fuel and go have a look, it will clear quickly…”), or destination SNCLSD for a given period (“yes, they are supposed to reopen at hour xx:xx, but they might be quicker…”), or simply places overloaded with traffic, and experiencing bad weather.
When the extent of the hold is known in advance, it is usual to ask for extended holding pattern for increased pax comfort.

Luckily those long holds were seldom, had maybe 3 in a 30 year period of flying the line.
> 2 hour holds, thanks to better communications, forecasts, etc, have probably disappeared…

Dan
ain't the Destination, but the Journey
LSZF, Switzerland

What was the cause of the holds?

Good question. They kept pushing us higher, and then slipping in missed approaches under us. Avignon’s approaches are pretty busy because it’s one of very few places in a large area where you can go practice them.

To add to the fun, Avignon is a “variable geometry approach”. If there is military activity at Orange it all works completely differently – different approach, different freq. And the military seem to go “inactive” when they stop for a coffee or a pee, so we switched frequencies – and which approach – more than once.

If your system has a GPSSteering setup then it can fly holds regardless of whether they are part of approach procedure or not.

That’s what I thought too but I obviously messed up the buttonology, because the AP showed no interest in flying the hold. The problem with the GTN750 is that while it is incredibly powerful, it is also very easy to mess up or just plain forget what sequence of buttons will get you where you want. Anyway “hand autopiloting” gave me something to do! The winds aloft were very variable so every time round the hold had to be tweaked a bit differently.

LFMD, France

In such case they were very good manual holds!

Antonio
LESB, Spain
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