Part of your primary instrument training is learning the ins and outs of holding. Often it can be a confusing and difficult skill to attain; however, once you get it, holding becomes second nature. One of the luxuries of advanced aircraft systems is the ability to program and define holding points pretty much anywhere you want, allowing the aircraft to navigate on autopilot to the hold, and then enter the hold.
Rarely are you given a holding instruction that doesn’t coincide with a depicted hold on either an arrival procedure or instrument approach. However, when you are given a non-standard or non-defined holding instruction, it’s just as easy to program and execute.
Modern airliners and even general aviation aircraft are commonly equipped with a flight management system or a global positioning system to simplify most navigation tasks. These systems incorporate a working database of instrument approaches, arrival and departure procedures, and en route navigation aids.
Included in this database are the published holds scattered throughout the national airspace system. This makes entering a published hold as easy as a few button presses. Defining a non-published hold is just as easy as entering the key components of the hold: inbound leg, defining fix, and leg distance or time. Once built, you can arm a hold hundreds of miles down your flight plan or you can fly direct to the fix and enter the hold immediately.
The most common use of this tool is during instrument approaches, or more correctly during the missed from an instrument approach. The database contains the entire procedure from initial to missed approach fix and, when coupled to an appropriate autopilot, the aircraft can be directed to complete the entire approach, missed approach, and enter the hold. It is, in fact, so smart that it will even tell you what type of entry to make when arriving at the holding fix.
It’s easy to let yourself become complacent with holding when you have such advanced avionics handling all the hard work. Be sure to practice holding the old-fashioned way for that rainy day when the ILS glideslope is unusable and you have to hold without the autopilot or a fancy FMS/GPS.
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