Narrative:

On arrival into pdx we were with approach control; who give us direct to the ommsi fix; off the arrival and toward an approach fix. He then gave us; as I best recall; descend to 2;500 ft. We descended. He then; at just passing 4;000 ft; communicated in a flustered way to verify we have terrain in sight and to stop our descent. Or slow it; I really wasn't sure the meaning behind this communication; as we were descending; in perfectly clear daytime and have zero warnings. Our radar altimeter has not even populated which means we were 2;500+ feet above any terrain and we had all terrain and the airport in sight.he clarified to us our last clearance received. He thought it was 5;300 ft. We could not exactly verify that as I had adjusted the altitude window to higher than 2;500 ft to stop a descent; but it was definitely not 5;300 ft assigned. Had we continued closer on our way towards 2;500 ft I'm sure we would have questioned things as well. He noticed an error from alerts on his end I'm sure; and we were on our way to noticing incorrect happenings; also. If anything; this was just a pure accidental clearance given earlier than planned. We may have been off the vertical safety course for a bit but this sort of accidental clearance issuance is more based in being human than gross negligence. I suppose briefing more MSA (minimum safe altitude) in relation to position of approaches/arrivals could be useful; but it was clear and I routinely get clearances to descend lower than other IFR segments on approach courses. I don't know what else to say really. He caught himself and checked we were seeing what we were doing. Good.

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Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: Air carrier flight crew received erroneous descent clearance inflight from Air Traffic Control.

Narrative: On arrival into PDX we were with Approach Control; who give us direct to the OMMSI fix; off the arrival and toward an approach fix. He then gave us; as I best recall; descend to 2;500 ft. We descended. He then; at just passing 4;000 ft; communicated in a flustered way to verify we have terrain in sight and to stop our descent. Or slow it; I really wasn't sure the meaning behind this communication; as we were descending; in perfectly clear daytime and have zero warnings. Our radar altimeter has not even populated which means we were 2;500+ feet above any terrain and we had all terrain and the airport in sight.He clarified to us our last clearance received. He thought it was 5;300 ft. We could not exactly verify that as I had adjusted the altitude window to higher than 2;500 ft to stop a descent; but it was definitely not 5;300 ft assigned. Had we continued closer on our way towards 2;500 ft I'm sure we would have questioned things as well. He noticed an error from alerts on his end I'm sure; and we were on our way to noticing incorrect happenings; also. If anything; this was just a pure accidental clearance given earlier than planned. We may have been off the vertical safety course for a bit but this sort of accidental clearance issuance is more based in being human than gross negligence. I suppose briefing more MSA (Minimum Safe Altitude) in relation to position of approaches/arrivals could be useful; but it was clear and I routinely get clearances to descend lower than other IFR segments on approach courses. I don't know what else to say really. He caught himself and checked we were seeing what we were doing. Good.

Data retrieved from NASA's ASRS site 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.