"Roy Smith" wrote in message
...
"Gary Drescher" wrote:
Is there any indication as to which was standardized first--the
holding-pattern direction or the traffic pattern direction?

My guess would be the traffic pattern. People were landing airplanes
long before they were holding them.

True, but it was awhile before air traffic was concentrated enough to
require standard patterns. If the holding pattern did get formalized first,
perhaps right-hand turns were chosen simply because clockwise is a more
standard direction than counterclockwise, and the choice was otherwise
arbitrary. For the traffic pattern, though, pilot-side visibility makes a
counterclockwise pattern much more sensible, as you noted.

Anyway, I'm just throwing in another wild guess.

--Gary