I agree with you completely on the handheld, and while you are at it get one with VOR and Localizer capability.
However, let's discuss what you might be flying, whether it's an emergency and whether skipping the holding pattern segment of the approach is a good idea just because you have an "emergency".
Steam Gauges?
Com, Nav, and transponder aside, if you are flying an aircraft with traditional steam gauges in a customary six pack, you'll lose the electrically operated turn coordinator in a total electrical failure. That's not too a big a deal. You've still got bank information from the AH to let you very closely approximate a standard rate turn at your normal approach speed. I'm just not seeing an emergency here.
A vacuum system failure that results in the loss of the artificial horizon and directional gyro is more burdensome in terms of a partial panel approach and you now have only the TC for gyro instruments. That's a lot more work as you are using the VSI, ASI and altimeter to monitor pitch attitude, and the TC and compass to monitor and manage bank and heading. That's a lot more work with a lot more cross checking.
However, intercepting the IAF with no transition and then immediately starting down the glide slope partial panel is going to massively increase your workload. Even if it is just the dead TC, you've got more than usual on your plate. Entering the holding pattern gives you time to change altitude, stabilize the altitude, turn in bound and stabilize the heading, cross the fix, and then establish a descent on the glideslope.
Glass panel?
If you have a glass panel, and you've had a primary electrical failure AND the battery back up has also failed, you're left with a standby vacuum driven artificial horizon, an altimeter, an airspeed indicator, and a compass. That's also higher workload, and the main challenge is accurately maintaining heading, especially in turbulence where the whiskey compass is spinning around.
Again, this is not a situation where I want to be crossing the fix, while dropping from 3800 to 3500 while intercepting the glide slope based on a swinging compass.
Now, how about adding in a total radio failure?
I fly with a handheld nav/com as backup and I have a mount that lets me put it where it can be part of the scan. It has both VOR and ILS capability. However, it doesn't have the same smooth needle sweep as a regular CDI, but rather gives me information in 1 degree increments. It's harder to fly a good approach with one, especially if you don't practice with it now and then .
But, it will let me fly and ILS or VOR approach in an emergency in a total electrical failure with no operable installed navs or coms- it's massively better than nothing at all.
Here again though, I'll be transitioning to the approach and doing it with a single combined nav/com that will do one or the other, and is perhaps less familiar and more cumbersome to set up for each segment. Again, skipping the holding pattern is going to hurt, rather than help.
A caveat here is that if I was flying glass panel IFR, I had a primary electrical system failure and had battery backup, BUT had reason to be concerned that it would not last long, I *might* consider skipping the holding pattern. But again there's also the risk of losing the backup in the middle of a transition to the localizer and glideslope, while changing altitude and heading and having to then transition to the back up instruments in the middle of that mess.
----
A basic premise in an emergency is never act in haste and make a bad situation worse, or use an option just because you have it.
There's a more or less local pilot in the area with a Cirrus. He pulled the parachute handle once after a rather routine problem that he decided was an *emergency*. He landed on six cars, totalled them, totalled the plane and injured his back. Fast forward a year or so down the road in a flight in his replacement Cirrus retrieving the aircraft after some regular maintenance, with an instructor and passenger on board.
The instructor noted he was getting nervous and asked him why. He indicated he thought he was going to have to deploy the parachute as he had a mechanical problem. The instructor inquired and learned the "problem" was and oil pressure needle that was twitching between normal and 0. The instructor noted the oil temp was fine and that the engine was running perfectly normally. He noted the aircraft was just out of maintenance and explained that oil pressure loss occurs as either a sudden and permanent drop, or slowly and steadily declines, depending on the failure. He pointed out that the twitchy needle symptom was almost certainly an instrumentation issue, not a loss of oil pressure issue. He advised that he needed to just keep monitoring the oil temp and at worst, divert to a closer airport - one with maintenance services available - and make a normal landing.
At this point the pilot, totally unconvinced, started to reach for the parachute lever and had to be physically restrained from pulling it by the instructor. It's the last time that instructor ever flew with that pilot.
The key points here are that with a little effort you can catastrophize pretty much anything into an emergency and then use that emergency to try to justify doing something truly stupid. But being able to do something in an emergency does not by itself make it a good idea to do that particular something in an emergency.
It's an extreme example with a truly stupid action on the part of the pilot. But IMHO, the only difference between that gloriously stupid action and skipping the holding pattern segment of an approach just because you lost coms is just a matter of degree.
View attachment 83112
