Narrative:

I was the flying pilot while my first officer was the pilot monitoring. At some point in time during the flight it appears we missed a hand off between cleveland center and new york center. We were given FL270 as our final instead of FL290. The last instruction we received was a descent down to FL240; which we complied with; and then nothing for sometime until the first officer asked if they were going to wait until the last minute to give us a descent; at which point we were coming up to the buf VOR. He got through to dispatch who gave us a frequency; which I dialed in; and when he returned from talking to them he contacted cleveland center who indicated that we'd been out of contact for some time and then inquired if everything was okay. We told him that it was and that we'd just tried to call wondering why we'd been left so high for so long and that's when he told us we'd been out of contact for a while. He gave us a descent down to FL210 and a frequency change and then we were given another descent and I never got a chance to note the last frequency we were on before we were handed over to approach and given further descents into the airport. The weather at roc was clear and ten miles with winds out of the east.I should have contacted ATC earlier when I noticed no response from them but its often that during night flights minutes go by without communications as the airspace has less traffic in it. But; as we got closer; noticing that we were higher than we normally would be coming into roc my first officer took the initiative and called to request lower and that's when we discovered that we were out of communication at the same time dispatch was trying to reach us. The easiest way to remedy this would be to query any long silence and what doesn't look normal; which we did; but it could have been done earlier.

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Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: ERJ Captain experienced lost communications with Cleveland Center at FL240; which is detected approaching top of descent.

Narrative: I was the Flying Pilot while my First Officer was the Pilot Monitoring. At some point in time during the flight it appears we missed a hand off between Cleveland Center and New York Center. We were given FL270 as our final instead of FL290. The last instruction we received was a descent down to FL240; which we complied with; and then nothing for sometime until the First Officer asked if they were going to wait until the last minute to give us a descent; at which point we were coming up to the BUF VOR. He got through to Dispatch who gave us a frequency; which I dialed in; and when he returned from talking to them he contacted Cleveland Center who indicated that we'd been out of contact for some time and then inquired if everything was okay. We told him that it was and that we'd just tried to call wondering why we'd been left so high for so long and that's when he told us we'd been out of contact for a while. He gave us a descent down to FL210 and a frequency change and then we were given another descent and I never got a chance to note the last frequency we were on before we were handed over to approach and given further descents into the airport. The weather at ROC was clear and ten miles with winds out of the east.I should have contacted ATC earlier when I noticed no response from them but its often that during night flights minutes go by without communications as the airspace has less traffic in it. But; as we got closer; noticing that we were higher than we normally would be coming into ROC my First Officer took the initiative and called to request lower and that's when we discovered that we were out of communication at the same time Dispatch was trying to reach us. The easiest way to remedy this would be to query any long silence and what doesn't look normal; which we did; but it could have been done earlier.

Data retrieved from NASA's ASRS site as of April 2012 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.