Narrative:

At the end of a long flight to guangzhou; while on the arrival and cleared down to 2;400 meters; we went about 300 ft low as the crew set altimeters as leveling vice as coming through the transition level of 3;300 meters. The qnh at the time 1000 hp. Several factors can be factored into the event; 1. Long day (fatigue) 2. Weather associated with a typhoon 3. Operating in the china meters environment 4. Communication challenges with the chinese controller 5. Change of arrivals [at] the transition level switch of the altimeters was missed by the entire crew as we descended; and to the best I can recall it was about this time that the controller finally assigned an arrival which was different from what we had loaded/expected. We had the gya 1W arrival loaded and were switched to the gya 1Y arrival.I could have done a better job backing up the captain and first officer. We had several times in the descent where it was tough to understand the controller's instructions and it was an extremely busy on the radios due to the amount of arrival traffic and weather in the area from the outer bands of the typhoon. We could have queried the controller on what arrival to expect sooner to avoid the higher workload of switching the arrivals while descending. This is only the second trip I have flown as a relief pilot and wasn't really sure what I should be concentrating my attention on while backing up the front end crew. In the future I will be more diligent in watching the arrival procedures and try to maintain better overall situational awareness.

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Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: The single augmented flight crew of a B777-200; at the end of a 12 hour flight to ZGGG including avoiding typhoon weather; failed to reset their altimeters in a timely fashion as the passed the Transition Level and descended below their cleared altitude. Fatigue and metric altimetry at low transition levels were cited as contributing factors.

Narrative: At the end of a long flight to Guangzhou; while on the arrival and cleared down to 2;400 meters; we went about 300 FT low as the crew set altimeters as leveling vice as coming through the transition level of 3;300 meters. The QNH at the time 1000 HP. Several factors can be factored into the event; 1. Long day (fatigue) 2. Weather associated with a typhoon 3. Operating in the China meters environment 4. Communication challenges with the Chinese Controller 5. Change of arrivals [at] the transition level switch of the altimeters was missed by the entire crew as we descended; and to the best I can recall it was about this time that the Controller finally assigned an arrival which was different from what we had loaded/expected. We had the GYA 1W arrival loaded and were switched to the GYA 1Y arrival.I could have done a better job backing up the Captain and First Officer. We had several times in the descent where it was tough to understand the Controller's instructions and it was an extremely busy on the radios due to the amount of arrival traffic and weather in the area from the outer bands of the typhoon. We could have queried the Controller on what arrival to expect sooner to avoid the higher workload of switching the arrivals while descending. This is only the second trip I have flown as a Relief Pilot and wasn't really sure what I should be concentrating my attention on while backing up the front end crew. In the future I will be more diligent in watching the arrival procedures and try to maintain better overall situational awareness.

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.