Narrative:

We were cruising at FL320 when center issued us a descend clearance to FL280 and then down to pilots discretion to FL260. The first officer (first officer) and I were discussing an MEL that was on the airplane that had to do with E1-anti-ice fail because during our climb out. We encountered icing and got a master warning a/I inoperative in icing conditions on the EICAS; we proceeded to run the QRH and shortly after that we exited icing conditions and the master warning (mw) message went away. As we were cruising trying to figure out why we got a mw when the valve should of been secured open; we received the ATC clearance to descend. We put in the altitude but never started our descend because we were distracted looking at the logbook and trying to figure out why we got the mw in icing since it doesn't state that in the MEL book as one of the messages that would occur with that MEL on board. ATC then queries us and says 'hey I didn't give you pilots discretion (pd) down to FL280; I told you to descend down to FL280; I need you out of FL300 in 1.5 minutes.' we nosed the airplane over and started a descent at about 3000 FPM and got down below FL300 in about 45 seconds; we then continued on down to FL260. I asked ATC if he had any traffic separation issues and he replied: 'no; I took care of it.' we proceeded to land with no further issues. When we landed; I wrote up the mw message in the logbook and proceeded to call maintenance so that they could take a look at the airplane.we got caught up in the mw message we received during icing conditions and the MEL for the engine 1 anti-ice valve and were distracted from the situation at hand when given the descent. [Suggest] to pay closer attention to the task at hand and not get so focused on an issue that can be taken care of once you land.

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Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: EMB145 Captain reported a failure to descend due to the distraction of troubleshooting an anti-ice warning.

Narrative: We were cruising at FL320 when Center issued us a descend clearance to FL280 and then down to Pilots Discretion to FL260. The First Officer (FO) and I were discussing an MEL that was on the airplane that had to do with E1-Anti-ice fail because during our climb out. We encountered icing and got a Master Warning A/I Inoperative in Icing conditions on the EICAS; we proceeded to run the QRH and shortly after that we exited icing conditions and the Master Warning (MW) message went away. As we were cruising trying to figure out why we got a MW when the valve should of been secured open; we received the ATC clearance to descend. We put in the altitude but never started our descend because we were distracted looking at the logbook and trying to figure out why we got the MW in icing since it doesn't state that in the MEL book as one of the messages that would occur with that MEL on board. ATC then queries us and says 'hey I didn't give you Pilots Discretion (PD) down to FL280; I told you to descend down to FL280; I need you out of FL300 in 1.5 minutes.' We nosed the airplane over and started a descent at about 3000 FPM and got down below FL300 in about 45 seconds; we then continued on down to FL260. I asked ATC if he had any traffic separation issues and he replied: 'no; I took care of it.' We proceeded to land with no further issues. When we landed; I wrote up the MW message in the logbook and proceeded to call Maintenance so that they could take a look at the airplane.We got caught up in the MW message we received during icing conditions and the MEL for the Engine 1 anti-ice valve and were distracted from the situation at hand when given the descent. [Suggest] to pay closer attention to the task at hand and not get so focused on an issue that can be taken care of once you land.

Data retrieved from NASA's ASRS site 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.