Don't know how others think about it, but my first though of Cairns is problematic terrain everywhere. So that sets my train of thoughts as to cross checking descent steps and procedures. Same as Canberra, Albury or Launy, and a few other places with unusual terrain and steps. It's nice to rely on ATC to give you descent altitudes (in this case ATC only cleared them to 6800 and then via the RNP so had no adverse affect), but I'm always conscious of the spot heights and such into these areas and have a floor in my mind where I will question a cleared alt if it seems too low. It doesn't help that MVAs are not published, so hard to gather what the minimum vector altitude is, but I reckon it won't be anywhere near 500 ft agl of terrain.
PS just listened to the radio of the VA incident, well done to that controller, spotted alerted and hurried them up back to altitude all well communicated. Probably avoided GPWS getting involved.
It's times like these I get reminded why we readback inane things like "descend via star". Oops, forgot to read the STAR/Approach chart properly and identify the limitations, ATC forgot to tell me to!
Last edited by 43Inches; 16th Nov 2022 at 01:31.