Instrument Approaches Explained: Holding, Precision and Non-Precision Procedures

An Instrument Rating is often summarised as “flying in cloud”. That is true but unhelpful, because the rating is really about procedures — published, repeatable sequences that get an aircraft from cruising altitude to a runway it cannot see until the last moment, safely, every time, regardless of who is flying.

This guide explains the procedures at the centre of the instrument phase of a Commercial Pilot Licence with Instrument Rating programme, in plain language.

Why approaches are published at all

Every instrument approach is a designed piece of infrastructure. Somebody has surveyed the terrain and obstacles, calculated safe altitudes, established where an aircraft must be at each point, and set the lowest altitude to which a pilot may descend before seeing the runway.

That design work is what makes instrument flying safe. Your job as a pilot is not to invent a path through the cloud. It is to fly a published one accurately, and to know exactly what to do when you reach the point where you must decide.

Reading the plate

Each approach is documented on a chart — an approach plate — and learning to read one quickly is a skill in itself. Every plate contains the same categories of information:

• The plan view. The track to be flown, the navigation aids or waypoints involved, and the terrain and obstacles nearby.
• The profile view. The vertical picture: where you descend, to what altitude, and at what point.
• Minima. The lowest altitude to which you may descend without the required visual reference, and the visibility required.
• The missed approach. Exactly what to fly if you do not see what you need to see.

Briefing the plate — out loud, before you start — is standard practice and is assessed. A pilot who begins an approach without having briefed it is already behind.

Precision and non-precision approaches

The practical distinction is whether the approach gives you guidance in the vertical plane as well as the horizontal.

Precision approaches

A precision approach provides both lateral and vertical guidance — classically an instrument landing system, where you fly a localiser for alignment and a glidepath for descent. Flown correctly it is a matter of keeping two needles centred with small, early corrections, which is much harder than it sounds when the aircraft is being pushed around by wind.

Non-precision approaches

A non-precision approach gives lateral guidance without a glidepath. The descent is managed by the pilot against altitude and distance checkpoints, which places more of the workload — and more of the room for error — on the crew. Modern satellite-based approaches have blurred the old categories by providing vertical guidance in aircraft equipped for it, but the underlying skill of managing a descent profile against distance remains fundamental.

Holding

A hold is a published racetrack pattern flown to keep an aircraft in a known piece of airspace — while waiting for traffic sequencing, for weather to improve, or simply to lose altitude before an approach.

Holding is where new instrument students most often come unstuck, because it demands mental arithmetic, wind correction and pattern awareness while continuing to fly accurately. The entry alone takes practice. It is also enormously satisfying once it clicks, and it is one of the clearest demonstrations that instrument flying is procedural work rather than intuition.

The decision point

Every approach ends at a point where one decision must be made: do you have the required visual reference to continue, or not?

On a precision approach that point is an altitude reached on the glidepath; on a non-precision approach it is a minimum altitude flown to a defined point. Either way the rule is the same, and it is absolute — if the required reference is not there, you go around. The discipline of executing that decision cleanly, on time, without negotiating with yourself, is one of the things instrument training exists to build.

The missed approach

The missed approach is not a failure. It is a published procedure, briefed before the approach began, and it is flown exactly as designed: power, attitude, configuration, then the tracking and climb the plate specifies.

Examiners and instructors watch missed approaches closely, because they combine high workload with high stakes — low altitude, changing configuration, a climb to establish, and a radio call to make. Cadets who have rehearsed it treat it as routine. Cadets who have not, do not.

Why so much of it is flown in the simulator

Procedural training is where a Flight and Navigation Procedures Trainer earns its place. An instructor can freeze a hold entry and explain it, reposition you and run it again, set the weather to exactly the minima, and fail a navigation aid at the least convenient moment — none of which can be done efficiently or safely in an aircraft.

Procedures are learned on the ground and consolidated in the air. By the time an approach is flown in the aeroplane, the sequence should already be familiar.

What it feels like

Most cadets describe instrument flying as the phase that changed how they think about aviation. Visual flying rewards feel; instrument flying rewards discipline. You learn to trust the instruments over your own sensations — which matters, because the human balance system produces convincing and dangerous illusions without an outside reference.

It is also the phase that most resembles the professional job. Airline flying is, to a first approximation, procedures executed accurately in a crew environment. Instrument training is where that begins.

For the broader picture, read what an Instrument Rating is and why every commercial pilot needs one. See the full Commercial Pilot Licence with Instrument Rating programme, or speak to Admissions. Programme details are subject to Layang Layang Flying Academy confirmation, the approved syllabus and applicable Civil Aviation Authority of Malaysia requirements.