ATC question - real world

[TSR2]

A few weeks back I couldn’t sleep because several aircraft seemed to be repeatedly flying overhead. I think the runway at Newcastle was temporarily closed so they were flying a pattern. I started watching them on flight radar, but notice the odd ball that started flying clockwise while the rest were flying anti clockwise. Did someone cockup, or would this normally happen….

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[Vc Ten]

Yes interesting. There's no way the TUI aircraft would have got onto approach from that altitude, Probably still at 4500ft on the last screen shot. I imagine she took a left turn over the airport, as the Jet2 Dalaman and Larnaca flights, heading out to Tynemouth, before turning on to approach.
Its also strange that Flight radar is sometimes not that accurate wth the position on the map. We had the Red arrows flying out of Hawarden the other week. On the return they generally land in formation All ready with the camera, but it looked on flight radar they were going to fly out wide and come in over the mountain. Next second they appeared directly over the house turning sharp right on a very short final. Needless to say missed the shot
Dale

[TSR2]

It’s an odd one isn’t it. With that RW in use it’s usually an anti clockwise pattern. I know they would have had vertical separation, but never seen an aircraft fly in the opposite direction when there are other aircraft already in the stack flying anticlockwise. I’m hoping Pete might spot this and shed some light.

[adysmith]

In your first shot it looks like the aircraft is just arriving at the beacon and so is flying a "hold entry".

Not necessarily the correct hold entry from that angle (hard to be precise on that) but second time over the beacon (or holding fix, there might not be an actual beacon there) it would almost certainly have taken up the left hand (anti clockwise) holding pattern.

[Archer]

There is a bit about holding entries here: https://severevfr.com/technique/how-to-enter-a-hold/

It could be a version of a teardrop or offset entry, or perhaps they were initially still under radar vectors before being told to join the hold. They may have been close to the dividing line between a direct and an offset entry and that can cause the end result to look a bit off. Does anyone have an approach plate for this particular airfield/runway to we can see where the hold is supposed to be?

[Vc Ten]

This any good??

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Dale

[PeteP]

I’m hoping Pete might spot this and shed some light.

Sorry, Ben, to be honest, I can't make head nor tail of what's happening from your screen shots. I thought the terminal holding fix for EGNT was ESTES but none of them seem to be holding there. Sorry I can't be of any help with this.

Pete

[Tomliner]

Sorry can’t help Ben but this is when an airband radio may nave given some indication . On Dale’s chart hasn’t the NEW VOR been replaced with the NATEB waypoint now? EricT

[Archer]

Thanks for the ILS plate. I did a bit of searching myself and the current ILS approach is very similar. The RNP variant is like this:

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I suspect that the first one was getting vectors from ATC and they used this routing for some specific reason that is only known to the controller. It looks odd, but as long as it didn't create any conflicts it's all fair game.