Narrative:

We were told to hold at lyh northeast on our inbound course left turns 20 nm legs efc XA55. I wrote down the clearance correctly and read back the clearance correctly. But we had difficulty in entering the hold in the FMS correctly. Neither pilot noticed the right turns that came up as a default and we were distracted by the fact that the holding course was depicted differently on the mfd than the inbound course by about 5 degrees. As a result we hit cancel and reentered the hold with the corrected inbound course and checked to see that the depicted hold looked correct on the mfd map. About this time the aircraft began to turn right and was in FMS speeds so it also began to slow to 200 KIAS. This was a problem because at FL360 green dot was 220. The pitch limit indicator (pli) came down and the first officer (first officer) noticed and took control; switching to manual speeds and resetting to mach .75. The aircraft was not accelerating in the turn so I selected climb-1. The aircraft only got as slow as mach .72 but in the turn we were probably 10-20 knots from the yellow airspeed tape and the aircraft would not accelerate until the wings were leveled. On the outbound side of the hold; ATC told us that next trip around the hold he wanted left turns. It was then that we realized our mistake and began attempting to reprogram the FMS. We did not make a 2nd turn in holding though and were cleared inbound past lyh.both pilots double checking each item in order before activating the hold. We both became fixated on the incorrectly displayed course and failed to catch the right turns vs. Left turns.

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Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: ERJ170 flight crew described errors entering a holding pattern in the FMC; resulting in a right turn instead of a left turn and a low airspeed at FL360.

Narrative: We were told to hold at LYH northeast on our inbound course LEFT TURNS 20 nm legs EFC XA55. I wrote down the clearance correctly and read back the clearance correctly. But we had difficulty in entering the hold in the FMS correctly. Neither pilot noticed the RIGHT TURNS that came up as a default and we were distracted by the fact that the holding course was depicted differently on the MFD than the inbound course by about 5 degrees. As a result we hit cancel and reentered the hold with the corrected inbound course and checked to see that the depicted hold looked correct on the MFD map. About this time the aircraft began to turn right and was in FMS speeds so it also began to slow to 200 KIAS. This was a problem because at FL360 green dot was 220. The Pitch Limit Indicator (PLI) came down and the First Officer (FO) noticed and took control; switching to manual speeds and resetting to Mach .75. The aircraft was not accelerating in the turn so I selected CLIMB-1. The aircraft only got as slow as Mach .72 but in the turn we were probably 10-20 knots from the yellow airspeed tape and the aircraft would not accelerate until the wings were leveled. On the outbound side of the hold; ATC told us that next trip around the hold he wanted LEFT TURNS. It was then that we realized our mistake and began attempting to reprogram the FMS. We did not make a 2nd turn in holding though and were cleared inbound past LYH.Both pilots double checking EACH item in order before activating the hold. We both became fixated on the incorrectly displayed course and failed to catch the RIGHT TURNS vs. LEFT TURNS.

Data retrieved from NASA's ASRS site and automatically converted to unabbreviated mixed upper/lowercase text. This report is for informational purposes with no guarantee of accuracy. See NASA's ASRS site for official report.