Originally Posted by
andrewr
He has Class D in the step ahead of him. I suspect the GPS didn't give an easy indication of the exact altitudes of the steps, just that they were there.
I think the Class D in front of him, on track was what he thought he had been told to transit at or below 1000'.
He appears to be lined up with the 3,500ft step with Mt Gladstone at 2,504ft and 1,200ft+ terrain after that, so it seems incomprehensible that he would think he needed to be below 1,000ft and make it through. He only needed to be around 10nm right of track to avoid all of this hassle and stay up there for the next 80 miles and into clear skies. By the time he got there (to the class D) he would have been in 10k+ vis and would have realised it couldn’t be done.
Also, the Class C clearance was denied for the northern sectors, but what about the southern sectors... where is the transcript ASA and what was actually said, not a vetted summary?
If he was descending in cloud in an attempt to get to 1,000ft in order to comply with a direction from ATC some 90 miles from the destination, it simply doesn’t compute.
I feel like he’s gone on his own with his own descent to avoid CTA completely. It’s not uncommon, especially when you get multiple knock-backs.