C-172 KPHL to DCA Experience

Do you have any add-ons in your Community folder? If yes, please remove and retest before posting.
No
Are you using Developer Mode or made changes in it?
No
Brief description of the issue:
Created a flight from KPHL to KDCA in the C-172 with G-1000. I selected IFR Low Altitude because I was in the 172. Shortly after takeoff I was ordered to climb and maintain 18,000 feet. Um, no thank you. I kept requesting to decrease my cruising altitude by 10,000, or 8,000, or 1000 feet. Nothing worked. Occasionally the response from ATC was something like Climb to 18000 expect 3000, or Climb to 18000 expect -2000. So I had to listen to ATC tell me to climb to 18000 the entire flight. I was cruising at 11000.

As I approached the last waypoint, I was given the runway and the procedure. RNAV 19 and I cannot remember the procedure. But it guided me west and then south and finally east. As I was cruising along it told me to descend to 1000 feet and then 800 feet and then 500 and then 300. I looked to my right as I was cruising East and runway 19 was about 2 miles to my right. So ATC told me cleared RNAV 19 approach, so I turned right about 90 degrees and landed. ATC told me I did not have clearance to land.

When will ATC be fixed?

Build Version # when you first started experiencing this issue:
1.18.15.0
Are you on the Steam or Microsoft Store version?
Microsoft PC

I had this exact same issue on River Visual 19 into DCA, Potomac approach is supposed to hand you off to tower about 15 miles northwest when you start along the river, and listening to live ATC and cross-referencing Flight Aware, that’s where most aircraft get clearance to land (even if there are three aircraft ahead and several taking off, Reagan tower gives all aircraft clearance to land a ways out). The ATC should not be giving out these constant “descend” instructions since that’s the point of a visual approach, you have to do it yourself.

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