Flight Crew Air Transport Pilot (ATP); Flight Crew Instrument; Flight Crew Multiengine
Flight Crew Last 90 Days 200; Flight Crew Total 10200; Flight Crew Type 6500
Situational Awareness
Airspace Violation All Types; Deviation - Altitude Excursion From Assigned Altitude; Deviation / Discrepancy - Procedural Clearance; Inflight Event / Encounter CFTT / CFIT
Air Traffic Control Issued Advisory / Alert; Flight Crew Became Reoriented
Human Factors; Airspace Structure
We were flying a Visual Approach to Runway 19 at MSY; New Orleans. We had a localizer only; no glideslope. The First Officer; who had just finished IOE; was flying. We were about 10 or 15 miles north of the airport; going straight in for Runway 19 on a visual approach; descending out of around 4;000 FT. The First Officer selected about 1700 FPM down on the vertical speed selector. I noticed we were going to be low and told him to shallow out the descent. He delayed; so passing through about 2;000 FT I reached up and selected myself a 100 FPM descent and told him what I was doing and that we were too low and needed to level off. Shortly after this; ATC advised we had a low altitude alert. We were at about 1;400 MSL over Lake Ponchartrain and still 5 to 10 miles out from landing. I believe we were below the Class B airspace. I advised ATC we were correcting and had leveled off. The rest of the flight and landing was uneventful.I should have monitored the descent more closely.
On a visual approach to Runway 19 at MSY the recently qualified First Officer of a CRJ-700 descended early and too aggressively triggering a low altitude alert from ATC.