Flight Crew Air Transport Pilot (ATP)
Flight Crew Last 90 Days 55; Flight Crew Total 30000; Flight Crew Type 1200
Situational Awareness
Aircraft Equipment Problem Critical; Deviation - Altitude Overshoot; Deviation - Altitude Crossing Restriction Not Met; Deviation / Discrepancy - Procedural Published Material / Policy; Deviation / Discrepancy - Procedural Clearance; Inflight Event / Encounter CFTT / CFIT
Flight Crew Overcame Equipment Problem; Flight Crew Returned To Clearance
Airport; Human Factors
Arriving from (a high altitude airport with a high altimeter setting) into PHX (a low altitude airport with a low altimeter setting) both pilots failed to reset our altimeters to the PHX local setting causing us to cross some of the arrival fixes at lower than published altitudes. ATC advised of the lower than normal altitudes and we realized what we had done and reset out altimeters. There was no conflict with any other aircraft and ATC stated that there was no problem on their end. In turbine aircraft we reset our altimeters descending below FL180 when arriving into an airport; but since this was a short flight we never climbed that high and this got us out of our normal sequence and we missed the altitude check. We will devise a system to recheck altimeters at lower level flights in the future.
The flight crew of a Citation 650 failed to set the local altimeter setting on descent to PHX and; consequently; crossed some fixes on their arrival below the charted altitude.