Dash 8-100 captain reports descending too low during a visual approach and receiving a 'too low; gea...

Narrative:

On a visual approach into the uncontrolled airport; I as pilot flying was distracted and descended lower than intended. I was alerted to this by the sounding of the egpws warning 'too low; gear;' at which time I observed we were around 600 ft MSL and not close enough to the runway for that altitude. Both pilots happened to be looking outside at the time and did not notice the error until the egpws warning was heard. I immediately initiated a climb to around 1;000 ft and; turning final; intercepted the visual glidepath and flew the aircraft to a normal landing. I believe the reason for the distraction was the act of pointing out something on the ground to the first officer; which were both a bad idea and a violation of sterile cockpit. The situation could easily have been avoided by following SOP's.

Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: DASH 8-100 Captain reports descending too low during a visual approach and receiving a 'Too Low; Gear' EGPWS warning and climbing up to 1;000 FT from about 600 FT.

Narrative: On a visual approach into the uncontrolled airport; I as pilot flying was distracted and descended lower than intended. I was alerted to this by the sounding of the EGPWS warning 'Too Low; Gear;' at which time I observed we were around 600 FT MSL and not close enough to the runway for that altitude. Both pilots happened to be looking outside at the time and did not notice the error until the EGPWS warning was heard. I immediately initiated a climb to around 1;000 FT and; turning final; intercepted the visual glidepath and flew the aircraft to a normal landing. I believe the reason for the distraction was the act of pointing out something on the ground to the First Officer; which were both a bad idea and a violation of sterile cockpit. The situation could easily have been avoided by following SOP's.

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.

Attributes
ACN	1057064
Time
Date	201212
Local Time Of Day	1801-2400
Place
Locale Reference	ZZZ.Airport
State Reference	US
Environment
Flight Conditions	VMC
Light	Night
Aircraft 1
Make Model Name	Dash 8-100
Operating Under FAR Part	Part 121
Flight Phase	Initial Approach
Person 1
Function	Captain Pilot Flying
Qualification	Flight Crew Air Transport Pilot (ATP)
Events
Anomaly	Deviation - Procedural Published Material / Policy Inflight Event / Encounter CFTT / CFIT

Dash 8-100 captain reports descending too low during a visual approach and receiving a 'too low; gear' egpws warning and climbing up to 1;000 ft from about 600 ft.