Originally Posted by
CBreezy
You don't get that option in a place like ATL or LGA or ORD. You don't get to stay a few hundred feet above assigned altitudes. Like I said, we do it so much in flatland that I can understand a crew misinterpreting a potentially illegal clearance. Doesn't excuse them for not flying the approach but I'm not relieving ATC of any blame. The non-standard clearance is what caused the confusion during an already high workload environment.
Agreed in places like ATL, ORD, LGA where US crew’s are very familiar, low threat terrain. Try that assumption at places like Bishkek (multiple conversions, metric altimeter to inches, QFE to QNH); a night transit of Petropavlovsk (huge terrain and poor English); or Gorno Altsk in Russia (mountains and Russian navigator translating) or Dillion, MT for the first and only time with customer crew new to the plane and you are a “ dead man walking”. I spent most of my career in those places, not ATL, ORD or LGA.
I’m old enough to remember the C-141, taking the clearance meant for another call sign (controller mixed clearance and call signs) and hitting the Cascades and TW 514 at IAD.
Might look at this recent close call, good for EGPWS
https://aviation-safety.net/wikibase/wiki.php?id=205811
Or this hull loss in AK after an erroneous altitude assignment.
https://aviation-safety.net/database...?id=20130308-0
GF