Page 24 - Nov22T

Hold Your Horses
From the Flight Deck
Air traffic control holding patterns: Coming soon to an airport near you.
by Kevin R. Dingman
In the 1980s, USAF UPT (Undergraduate Pilot Training) was old-school: manual systems, old avionics and an all-in-one HSI/RMI. The entry position at my airline
was as a Flight Engineer on the B-727. And in those days, new-hire hazing, I mean training, was administered by old-school, two-stripe flight engineers in a sim and aircraft with exclusively antique systems and avionics. We lov- ingly called them “steam gauges.” That’s the terminology we boomers used before millennials and Gen-Z started calling them “round-dial.”
While the teaching etiquette of the MD-80 instructors a few years later was kinder and gentler, the focus remained on antique systems and avionics. My Duke’s avionics are similar to the original Mad Dog (all steam gauges except the GPS and transponder). The 737, especially the MAX, and the Citation 650’s (III, VI and VII) I now fly, are more modern. The need for an understanding or an appreciation of antique navigational instruments is fading. But it’s not
22 • TWIN & TURBINE / November 2022
gone. We were recently given old-school holding instruc- tions from ATC, and the aforesaid old-school knowledge proved useful.
Lions and Tigers and Bears – Oh My!
– Wizard of Oz, 1939
“Citation 7VS I have holding instructions; advise when ready to copy.” The holding clearance was old-school: “Hold east on the RDU 095 degree radial, 35-mile fix, left turns, 10-mile legs, maintain six thousand, EFC 2140.” The ap- proach controller had used his picture of the weather and our location to build a holding pattern outside the rain showers – he was doing us a favor. But the clearance to make this happen was straight out of a simulator exercise, as confirmed by the immediate simulator-like knot in my stomach. Almost exclusively nowadays, holding is issued to a published fix that has a published holding pattern: