NASA · Aviation Safety Reporting System
A330 Captain reported descending below an altitude restriction on descent into PHX after encountering wake turbulence.
What is ASRS?
The Aviation Safety Reporting System is NASA's voluntary, confidential, non- punitive incident-reporting system, established 1976. Pilots, controllers, dispatchers, and maintenance technicians file reports describing safety- relevant events. NASA de-identifies every report before adding it to the public database. Reports are not investigated by NASA, the FAA, or the NTSB — they represent the reporter's perspective.
Pilot narrative
Verbatim from the de-identified NASA record. First-person account by the
reporter. NASA strips identifying details (names, company, specific time);
anonymization placeholders are ZZZ,
X, Y.
On the HYDDR 1 arrival with a 25L transition, I selected 250 KTS and requested to activate the APPR PHASE at around 10,000 feet. Concurrently, we encountered unusually strong wake turbulence lasting for several minutes. Two to three miles prior to CHAVO intersection, we noticed the aircraft was not leveling off at the 9000 foot crossing restriction. We then noticed the aircraft was in OPEN DESCENT. I immediately corrected back to the appropriate altitude. During the correction, we dipped approximately 400 feet below the appropriate altitude. This altitude diversion did not cause any conflict with any other traffic and ATC did not mention the deviation
NASA classification — Anomalies
- Deviation - Altitude
- Deviation / Discrepancy - Procedural
- Inflight Event / Encounter
NASA classification — Assessments
- Contributing Factors / Situations
- Environment - Non Weather Related · Human Factors · Procedure
- Primary Problem
- Human Factors
ASRS reports are voluntarily submitted, de-identified by NASA, and represent the reporter's perspective. The presence of reports on a topic cannot be used to infer prevalence in the National Airspace System. The authoritative source is the NASA ASRS Database Online at asrs.arc.nasa.gov ↗.