How often do you get a hold while IFR?

Airliner gets a hold. Pilot says "You know, it costs a thousand dollars to go around once in a hold". ATC comes back with "well, give me three thousand dollars worth then". -:)
 
MAKG1 said:
It says you need 45 minute reserve AFTER flying to your alternate.

That's a hell of a long hold.
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Different entities calculate the 45 minutes very differently.
An old company I worked for used Jeppesen and Universal for long range/international flight plans. They figured 45 minutes at high altitude, long range cruise, without any allowance for climb back up to that altitude after a missed. They assumed you were cruising at LRC and the winds slowed you by 45 minutes.

I'm in no way saying this is the way it should be done, but rather the way it often is.
 
MAKG1 said:
It says you need 45 minute reserve AFTER flying to your alternate.

That's a hell of a long hold.
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Yea 45 minutes to putz around. It could be a hold but it doesn't say we specifically need holding fuel.
 
A get several a year flying the 737.

Yesterday, in the NYC area, heard a JetBlue pilot getting holding instructions complaining that it was his third hold of the day.
 
Kritchlow said:
Different entities calculate the 45 minutes very differently.
An old company I worked for used Jeppesen and Universal for long range/international flight plans. They figured 45 minutes at high altitude, long range cruise, without any allowance for climb back up to that altitude after a missed. They assumed you were cruising at LRC and the winds slowed you by 45 minutes.

I'm in no way saying this is the way it should be done, but rather the way it often is.
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I think it should be done just in that way, for one, although the Chief Counsel thinks you should plan on having THREE climbs worth of fuel for every flight. IMO, that is ridiculous. I'm with Capt. Jeppesen. See slides 10 through 14 in Flight Planning for Government.

dtuuri
 
MAKG1 said:
It says you need 45 minute reserve AFTER flying to your alternate.

That's a hell of a long hold.
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Who says we even have an alternate? Holding can happen for a lot of reasons other than weather, and many times we're still a ways from our destination when it does. I want that 45 minutes in case it all goes bad at the airport, so I'm not inclined to dip into it for a hold.

Fortunately, like Jordan, my company tends to give us quite a bit more than 45 minutes. Regardless, the dispatchers won't hesitate to give us more if we ask for it.
 
dtuuri said:
I think it should be done just in that way, for one, although the Chief Counsel thinks you should plan on having THREE climbs worth of fuel for every flight. IMO, that is ridiculous. I'm with Capt. Jeppesen. See slides 10 through 14 in Flight Planning for Government.

dtuuri
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Not so sure I agree. Again, the 45 minutes is calculated at FL450 LRC (for example) without descending to your initial airport, and essentially an idle descent to your alternate.
 
Larry in TN said:
A get several a year flying the 737.

Yesterday, in the NYC area, heard a JetBlue pilot getting holding instructions complaining that it was his third hold of the day.
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Don't they get paid by the flight hour? Was he complaining or celebrating?
 
Kritchlow said:
Not so sure I agree. Again, the 45 minutes is calculated at FL450 LRC (for example) without descending to your initial airport, and essentially an idle descent to your alternate.
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Not sure before or after viewing the slides?

dtuuri
 
Kritchlow said:
You lost me....?
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I hyperlinked to the slides in my post (at the end) because this very subject was covered in my tutorial on IFR planning for fuel required.

EDIT: Note that iPads have been reported to not be rendering text well since they updated their operating system. Older versions still look nice.

dtuuri
 
dtuuri said:
I hyperlinked to the slides in my post (at the end) because this very subject was covered in my tutorial on IFR planning for fuel required.

EDIT: Note that iPads have been reported to not be rendering text well since they updated their operating system. Older versions still look nice.

dtuuri
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I will check them out. Didn't see them in your post but will go back and check.
Regardless of legality I don't like the practice, and at least our airline doesn't follow it.
 
dtuuri said:
I think it should be done just in that way, for one, although the Chief Counsel thinks you should plan on having THREE climbs worth of fuel for every flight. IMO, that is ridiculous. I'm with Capt. Jeppesen. See slides 10 through 14 in Flight Planning for Government.

dtuuri
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Okay, I looked at the slides. Made my head spin. I'll look at them a few more times and try to decipher.
I didn't agree with the old company's philosophy, but agree with the airlines. Seeing as though I'm no longer with the old company, I guess I'm okay.
 
Kritchlow said:
Okay, I looked at the slides. Made my head spin. I'll look at them a few more times and try to decipher.
I didn't agree with the old company's philosophy, but agree with the airlines. Seeing as though I'm no longer with the old company, I guess I'm okay.
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The regs don't say you have to "complete the landing at" the alternate, only the destination. You merely need enough fuel to fly "to" the alternate plus another :45 mins. But I do think LRC at FL450 is being too clever by half unless your alternate is, say, Bermuda.

dtuuri
 
dtuuri said:
The regs don't say you have "complete the landing at" the alternate, only the destination. You merely need enough fuel to fly "to" the alternate plus another :45 mins. But I do think LRC at FL450 is being too clever by half unless your alternate is, say, Bermuda.

dtuuri
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And the LRC at 450 was overhead your original destination. Makes no sense to me.
 
Kritchlow said:
And the LRC at 450 was overhead your original destination. Makes no sense to me.
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Yeah, that's not i/a/w the reg.

EDIT: Actually, that IS what the reg says, Part 121, that is, BUT then the +45 min reserve needs to begin at alternate field elevation, not FL450.

dtuuri
 
dtuuri said:
Yeah, that's not i/a/w the reg.

EDIT: Actually, that IS what the reg says, Part 121, that is, BUT then the +45 min reserve needs to begin at alternate field elevation, not FL450.

dtuuri
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They planned us that way and we were not 121.
We did 91/91K/135, but never 121.
Again, it wasn't the company doing the planning. It was Jeppesen or Universal.

It was intended to get to Bermuda and be able to make the mainland for an alternate.
 
Kritchlow said:
They planned us that way and we were not 121.
We did 91/91K/135, but never 121.
Again, it wasn't the company doing the planning. It was Jeppesen or Universal.

It was intended to get to Bermuda and be able to make the mainland for an alternate.
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Not a lot of critical thinkers there, I suspect. You'd think somebody would ask, "How we gonna get from DC to Baltimore on the fuel flow at FL450?"

Now, I bet the airlines had something to do with the difference in language between 121 and 91. There's some critical thinking going on there. They probably wanted the second climb to altitude to occur at the lowest weight. If it were worded the same as 91, it would require more fuel always being carried just on the rare chance of a missed approach at the destination. "More fuel" because of the higher fuel consumption during the theoretical climbout from the destination compared to at the alternate.

dtuuri
 
At this time stamp, there are 9 commercial aircraft in holds in Colorado because of the storm over Denver Intl. Kinda fun to see the hold patterns, There are 5 in the same hold NE of KDEN
 
It's quite rare in GA flying, especially in airspace with radar. I've been given radar vectors that constitutes a hold once when the airport I was landing at temporarily shut down (i.e. Fly 270, fly 090, fly 270, fly 090) but never yet an actual hold that I didn't ask for. In that one case we eventually landed at our alternate.
 
There are several STARs into Heathrow and Gatwick over in the U of K that terminate with a hold - meaning unless cleared otherwise if your routing contains that STAR you might as well build the hold because you're very likely (95%) getting it.
 
24 years flying in and out of ATL (based there) I had plenty of holding and some delay vectors. Worst was when it was your last flight of the trip (going home leg) and they put you in a hold. Especially if you were a commuter, as I was.

Never had any holds flying GA other than instrument training.
 
Once in Canada. A medical fight was about to take off, no radar so we got put in a hold off the NDB
 
Only a few times outside of training. Either for other traffic at an uncontrolled field or for thunderstorms between us and the destination airport.
 
ejensen said:
Once in Canada. A medical fight was about to take off, no radar so we got put in a hold off the NDB
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That's a good one. "Hold in the east half of the county...."

I did an ndb hold in lieu on a checkride...
 
If you fly IFR in IMC into Sun Valley (Hailey KSUN) on a Friday afternoon, you will probably get a hold. It's one in or one out at a time. Numerous smaller airports are like this.
 
MAKG1 said:
How in the hell can that possibly be consistent with 14 CFR 91.167? Most holds are a hell of a lot shorter than 45 min.
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jordane93 said:
We land with a lot of fuel. I don't think I've landed with less than 4500 pounds. Maybe 4000 in the 200.
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We carry very little past the reg requirements. I typically see sub 3500 pounds on the 200. Last week we only had about 300 lbs to use as holding fuel. Thankfully, ATC just ended up vectoring us a little.

MauleSkinner said:
Not gonna say it...not gonna say it....
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Damn it!
 
I've had two this spring so far. The first one was for congestion in Dallas. It started out as delay vectors, but we realized what was going on and volunteered to do a published hold on our approach. (ATC liked that a lot.) The second one was a few days ago out of Longview, TX when a flight plan automation issue prevented the departure controller from being able to hand us off to the center. We were issued a non-published hold for that one, as we were GPS direct to our destination.

I've been on ATC facility tours at small airports where their approach control has had to issue holds for overflights headed to larger airports in perfectly VMC weather simply due to congestion.

Bottom line is they happen more often than you might think depending on where you're located in the country.
 
You can't eat into that 45 minutes of fuel just to do you're average hold. The moment you are showing landing less than 45 minutes we are min fuel, and less than 30 minutes is emergency. So long story short ya 45 minutes of gas is a lot to do a few laps, but we will never plan on using that fuel and we certainly won't eat into it to hold.
 
JustinD said:
You can't eat into that 45 minutes of fuel just to do you're average hold. The moment you are showing landing less than 45 minutes we are min fuel, and less than 30 minutes is emergency. So long story short ya 45 minutes of gas is a lot to do a few laps, but we will never plan on using that fuel and we certainly won't eat into it to hold.
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Glad you pointed this out. I'd think of that :45 minutes as "fuel burn error". You might have that much left, but probably don't.

dtuuri
 
coloradobluesky said:
If you fly IFR in IMC into Sun Valley (Hailey KSUN) on a Friday afternoon, you will probably get a hold. It's one in or one out at a time. Numerous smaller airports are like this.
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Yup. At an uncontrolled airport when an IFR airplane has been cleared for an approach ATC has to protect the airspace, missed approached included. So once a pilot has landing assured or has landed, you need to cancel your IFR. Had satellite uncontrolled airports and had to hold planes out because the cleared plane failed to cancel. Usually we would call the FBO and track the pilot down.
 
JustinD said:
You can't eat into that 45 minutes of fuel just to do you're average hold. The moment you are showing landing less than 45 minutes we are min fuel, and less than 30 minutes is emergency. So long story short ya 45 minutes of gas is a lot to do a few laps, but we will never plan on using that fuel and we certainly won't eat into it to hold.
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Is this a company policy? I've never heard this before.
 
I don't consider 45 minutes enough, personally. Which is MY policy. Plane doesn't run very well outa gas.
 
Kritchlow said:
Is this a company policy? I've never heard this before.
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I should have clarified that. Well legally of course you can dip into it if you NEEDED it. But the ref says you can't operate a civil aircraft on an IFR flight plan unless you have enough fuel to fly to your most distant alternate and 45 thereafter. The moment you can not do that anymore you are no longer in accordance with that reg and What most would consider min fuel min fuel . By us we operate it at basically untouchable unless needed for emergency/abnormal purposes. If we show dipping into that 45 min, we're looking for a place to divert for more gas. I also believe most pilots regardless of the operation however would view it the same way. By our operation we won't operate to show An FOD lower than than reserve fuel.
 
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mscard88 said:
My carrier gave us hold fuel.
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If the wx is forecasted not well, or it's a notorious holding airport we do too....even if we don't have it as "hold" fuel we always tanker an adequate amount over required so generally a hold for a bit is no big deal.
 
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