Holding patterns

Direct, parallel, and teardrop entries, timing, and holding speeds: keeping the airplane in a box in the sky.

16 min read · Charts and procedures

After this lesson you can

  • Fly a standard holding pattern from the ATC clearance elements alone, with no chart published.
  • Choose the correct entry, direct, parallel, or teardrop, based on the heading the aircraft arrives on.
  • State the maximum holding airspeed for a given altitude, and the two nonstandard exceptions marked on charts.
  • Explain how DME or RNAV holding differs from time-based holding.

Holding is the aviation equivalent of a highway on-ramp with no room to merge: the airplane flies a racetrack-shaped pattern in a fixed block of airspace, waiting for traffic ahead to clear or weather to improve, without giving up the position ATC has assigned. Every holding pattern, charted or not, is built from the same handful of rules.

This lesson works through those rules directly from the source: how a standard pattern is built, which of three entries to use, how fast is too fast, and what changes when the leg length is defined by distance instead of time.

The rest of this lesson

  1. 1.What a holding clearance contains
  2. 2.Building the pattern: no wind, then with wind
  3. 3.Picking the entry: direct, parallel, or teardrop
  4. 4.Timing, bank angle, and turns
  5. 5.Maximum holding airspeeds
  6. 6.DME and RNAV holding: distance instead of time
  7. 7.Leaving the hold

These 7 sections, their figures, the checks along the way and the end-of-lesson quiz come with the IFR track. Paid once, yours for good.

See what the IFR track costsEvery module 1 is free to read, no account, no card.

Key terms

Try to recall each definition before turning the card.