Friend of mine saw this thread and wrote thus:
"Back in the days before they had radar at Bali, I was ferrying an F 27 from Muscat to Christchurch. On board I had a trainee Captain and a low time First Officer. Most of the sectors were conducted with me supervising from the jump seat when the Captain was flying and from the left when giving the F/O a leg.
Inbound to Bali, at night, I was having a bit of a snooze down the back, with the intent to go forward for the approach, as none of us had been to Bali before. I heard the engines throttle back for the descent and thought to myself “hmmm...a bit early, maybe we had good tailwinds?” Went forward to note that they had set 4000 feet on the alt alert. “What’s happening?” Says I. “Cleared to the NDB, 4000” says they. So, of course I stopped further descent while looking up the MSA, which I knew to be high to the north. Lucky I did. Seems that back then, if there was no conflicting traffic ATC cleared aircraft down to the IAF or FAF without any regard to terrain. It was assumed that the crew would fly the necessary procedure – which in this case involved ‘shuttling’ down in the holding pattern.
Lucky I have a built-in time and motion meter, hey? "