Back in the '80s some Flying Tiger aces planted a B747 into a hill at WMSA old Subang Kuala Lumpur international airport because they descended to 400ft instead of the cleared altitude of two thousand four hundred feet. After that ( and a lot of hoo haa, hand wringing and racist protestations ) ICAO recommended against using the phrase " cleared to " as the then KUL ATC had cleared those guys with the instructions" cleared two four zero zero feet " which was two thousand four hunderd feet, but the Flying Tigers crew misinterpreted that as "cleared to four zero zero feet ".
Well it was poor sitiation awareness as the charted initial approach altitude was 2400 feet and the misinterpreted four zero zero feet was too low an altitude to be an initial approach altitude...they were cleared ILS approach, certainly not a GCA approach. They had 3 crew members from the USA and yet the error chain was not broken! And we have numbskulls on the OZ214 crash thread wondering how that tragic accident could have happened!!! Nobody then made the claim that American aviators were piss poor pilots.
