Enroute controller described a below mia event failing to note a recent change had raised the mia by...

Narrative:

I was working the r-side with 3 sectors combined; one of which was a fixed posting. Frequency congestion caused it to feel busier than it was with different aircraft stepping on each other. The supervisor decided to split the sector. I gave a BE1900 a pilot's discretion descent from FL220 to 100 from the south landing pga; which is canned clearance many controllers do. The flight path has the BE1900 flash through another sector and back into our airspace. Recently; the mia changed from 100 to 106. I'm not sure why this is; but the adjacent mia in our airspace remained the same; which is below 100. I forgot the mia raised 600 ft in the airspace and while the sector was being split off; I saw the BE1900 flashing with the terrain. I told the BE1900 to amend altitude and maintain 106. He complied but descended as low as 099 before stopping his decent and climbing back up to 106. I'm not sure why the mia changed. I was told that it wasn't graphed properly and that to more accurately display the correct mia they would need to create more mia's? I remember reading a memo about it but I'm so used to giving that clearance that I forgot the terrain changed in la's airspace. It would be nice to have more accurate mia's that reflected the terrain in that area since it has been lowered over the last years I've been working here.

Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: Enroute Controller described a below MIA event failing to note a recent change had raised the MIA by 600 FT.

Narrative: I was working the R-Side with 3 sectors combined; one of which was a fixed posting. Frequency congestion caused it to feel busier than it was with different aircraft stepping on each other. The Supervisor decided to split the sector. I gave a BE1900 a pilot's discretion descent from FL220 to 100 from the south landing PGA; which is canned clearance many controllers do. The flight path has the BE1900 flash through another sector and back into our airspace. Recently; the MIA changed from 100 to 106. I'm not sure why this is; but the adjacent MIA in our airspace remained the same; which is below 100. I forgot the MIA raised 600 FT in the airspace and while the sector was being split off; I saw the BE1900 flashing with the terrain. I told the BE1900 to amend altitude and maintain 106. He complied but descended as low as 099 before stopping his decent and climbing back up to 106. I'm not sure why the MIA changed. I was told that it wasn't graphed properly and that to more accurately display the correct MIA they would need to create more MIA's? I remember reading a memo about it but I'm so used to giving that clearance that I forgot the terrain changed in LA's airspace. It would be nice to have more accurate MIA's that reflected the terrain in that area since it has been lowered over the last years I've been working here.

Data retrieved from NASA's ASRS site as of July 2013 and automatically converted to unabbreviated mixed upper/lowercase text. This report is for informational purposes with no guarantee of accuracy. See NASA's ASRS site for official report.

Attributes
ACN	1083381
Time
Date	201304
Place
Locale Reference	ZDV.ARTCC
State Reference	CO
Aircraft 1
Make Model Name	Beech 1900
Operating Under FAR Part	Part 121
Flight Phase	Descent
Flight Plan	IFR
Person 1
Function	Enroute
Qualification	Air Traffic Control Fully Certified
Events
Anomaly	ATC Issue All Types Deviation - Altitude Overshoot Deviation - Procedural Clearance Deviation - Procedural Published Material / Policy

Enroute controller described a below mia event failing to note a recent change had raised the mia by 600 ft.