Ever Been In A Holding Pattern More Than 3 Times?

FlyboyOz · Sat Aug 17, 2013 7:39 am

Last week, I was surprised that our plane had been go-around 6 times. There was no problem with it and the weather looked fine and sunny. I guess that we had arrived too early and had to wait for other planes to land first before us. It gave me headache! lol Now...we arrived at the airport 15 mins late.

I was told that the plane can go around three times only. If not, it would run out of the fuel very quickly.

CXfirst · Sat Aug 17, 2013 8:05 am

Quoting FlyboyOz (Thread starter):
Last week, I was surprised that our plane had been go-around 6 times. There was no problem with it and the weather looked fine and sunny. I guess that we had arrived too early and had to wait for other planes to land first before us.

I'm not quite sure what you mean here. Why would your aircraft be on approach, and then go-around because other planes had to land? If you were early, you'd just be circling. Seems illogical that you would even be on approach. I could understand you needing to circle 6 times, but not go-around.

-CXfirst

tonystan · Sat Aug 17, 2013 8:19 am

A go around is when an aircraft has to abort landing at the very final stages of a flight usually with the landing gear down and configured for landing.

Are you sure you don't meant "holding" in a landing circuit?

zrs70 · Sat Aug 17, 2013 4:24 pm

A plane would not have a missed approach 6 times. OP must mean the plane circled, which is quite normal. Could be a whole host of reasons, from ground ops to a plane issue to a crew issue.

PITingres · Sat Aug 17, 2013 6:35 pm

I've been on a plane that missed approach twice (I think, wasn't in the cockpit of course); it was an MD80 and thinking back on it, I'm surprised that the pax barf-bags weren't in use. Nasty shifting winds, but it was late in the evening and I don't think it was traffic. I suspect (without proof) that one more missed approach would have resulted in a divert.

6 go-rounds without being a hold sounds wildly excessive to me, so I'm thinking that it was a hold rather than a missed approach.

Viscount724 · Sat Aug 17, 2013 10:35 pm

Quoting zrs70 (Reply 3):
A plane would not have a missed approach 6 times. OP must mean the plane circled, which is quite normal. Could be a whole host of reasons, from ground ops to a plane issue to a crew issue.

More than 6 circuits in a holding pattern (which I'm sure is what the OP is referring to) are common. Can't count the number of times it's happened on my flights at LHR where it's very common (one reason I do my best to avoid LHR). Very rare at most other major European airports.

As far as actual go-arounds (missed approaches) are concerned, noticed one example a week ago (August 9) in the Transport Canada daily occurrence reports of a WestJet Encore Q400 that made 3 missed approaches at YYC before landing on the 4th attempt.

A Westjet Encore DHC-8-400 (WJE3247) from Saskatoon, SK (CYXE) to Calgary, AB (CYYC) overshot runway 16 at 0231Z due to unstable approach. The aircraft was vectored back around for an approach runway 10 and overshot that runway at 0240Z due to being "too high and having issues". WJE3247 was then vectored back for an approach runway 16 and was overshot by Tower due to traffic ahead on approach too slow. WJE3247 was vectored back for an approach runway 16 and landed OK at 0305Z.

FlyboyOz · Sun Aug 18, 2013 4:34 am

Oh yeah... Sorry for the confusion! Yeah, I mean holding, the plane circled and holding pattern. Thanks for clarifying it.

aloges · Sun Aug 18, 2013 8:31 am

Yup, at RJK: it's a very small airport, doesn't have much in the way of ILS and it was foggy when my flight from STR got there. They flew the approach, went around and flew holding patterns, waiting for the fog to lift. Rinse and repeat another time, then we diverted to ZAG, waited there for a while and finally went to RJK - four hours late, IIRC.

Loran · Sun Aug 18, 2013 8:47 am

The only places where I experienced more than three circuits were LHR, DXB and DOH the other day.

Regards,
Loran

TurkishWings · Sun Aug 18, 2013 3:35 pm

More than 3 circuits are a pretty common occurrence at IST during peak times...

aerorobnz · Sun Aug 18, 2013 3:54 pm

Quoting TurkishWings (Reply 9):
More than 3 circuits are a pretty common occurrence at IST during peak times...

Likewise at MNL. I did it inbound to HKG in June, it assisted in ensuring I miss my connection. My plane had already been held on two seperate occasions onthe ground in MNL as well.

hoons90 · Mon Aug 19, 2013 2:28 am

Due to severe storms at DFW, we did this for almost an hour:

Glad that our plane was carrying enough fuel to do that even after a 13 hr flight!

afterburner · Mon Aug 19, 2013 4:38 am

CGK @ peak hours (August 17, about 19:30 UTC+7)

[Edited 2013-08-18 21:39:52]

Type-Rated · Sun Aug 25, 2013 7:26 pm

If you like holding, just fly into ORD during the winter low visibility days. It never fails.