Crj-700 first officer reported receiving a low altitude alert from ATC after overshooting cleared al...

Attributes
ACN	1652949
Time
Date	201905
Local Time Of Day	1201-1800
Place
Locale Reference	IAD.Airport
State Reference	DC
Environment
Flight Conditions	VMC
Light	Daylight
Aircraft 1
Make Model Name	Regional Jet 700 ER/LR (CRJ700)
Operating Under FAR Part	Part 121
Flight Phase	Descent
Route In Use	Visual Approach
Flight Plan	IFR
Person 1
Function	First Officer Pilot Flying
Qualification	Flight Crew Instrument Flight Crew Air Transport Pilot (ATP) Flight Crew Multiengine
Events
Anomaly	Deviation - Altitude Excursion From Assigned Altitude Deviation - Procedural Clearance

Narrative:

Flight to washington dulles. ATC gave us instructions to descend to 7000 ft. Airplane was on autopilot mode and we descended to 7000 ft as I announced altitudes cap. Right after that ATC cleared us for 19C visual approach. I asked [the] captain to sequence the approach and I started to verify approach course and frequency and when I looked up we were descending to 6700 ft and captain put the airplane in vsi mode to climb back up to 7000 ft. While he was doing it ATC called and gave us a low altitude alert and captain responded to that we were climbing to 7000 ft. After discussing it with captain we concluded that I had pressed vsi mode instead of navigation mode when ATC cleared us for the approach.we should have turned off the autopilot and climbed back up to 7000 ft as this procedure would have been much quicker as the vsi mode took about 5-7 seconds.

Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: CRJ-700 First Officer reported receiving a low altitude alert from ATC after overshooting cleared altitude on descent into IAD; citing lack of mode awareness as contributing.

Narrative: Flight to Washington Dulles. ATC gave us instructions to descend to 7000 ft. Airplane was on autopilot mode and we descended to 7000 ft as I announced ALTS CAP. Right after that ATC cleared us for 19C visual approach. I asked [the] Captain to sequence the approach and I started to verify approach course and frequency and when I looked up we were descending to 6700 ft and Captain put the airplane in VSI mode to climb back up to 7000 ft. While he was doing it ATC called and gave us a low altitude alert and Captain responded to that we were climbing to 7000 ft. After discussing it with Captain we concluded that I had pressed VSI mode instead of NAV mode when ATC cleared us for the approach.We should have turned off the autopilot and climbed back up to 7000 ft as this procedure would have been much quicker as the VSI mode took about 5-7 seconds.

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.

Crj-700 first officer reported receiving a low altitude alert from ATC after overshooting cleared altitude on descent into iad; citing lack of mode awareness as contributing.