NASA · Aviation Safety Reporting System
Air carrier First Officer reported receiving a low altitude alert from ATL Tower on final approach. Flight crew leveled off and landed safely.
What is ASRS?
The Aviation Safety Reporting System is NASA's voluntary, confidential, non- punitive incident-reporting system, established 1976. Pilots, controllers, dispatchers, and maintenance technicians file reports describing safety- relevant events. NASA de-identifies every report before adding it to the public database. Reports are not investigated by NASA, the FAA, or the NTSB — they represent the reporter's perspective.
Pilot narrative
Verbatim from the de-identified NASA record. First-person account by the
reporter. NASA strips identifying details (names, company, specific time);
anonymization placeholders are ZZZ,
X, Y.
Flight Crew was cleared for visual approach into ATL. Just inside of 4 miles, ATC told the flight crew "Low altitude alert. Check your altitude immediately" and was given a local altimeter setting. The aircraft was fully configured and one dot low on the PAPI lights. When notified from ATC, the crew leveled off and landed safely. Cause: Crossing over the FAF for the approach, the crew was 200ft above the prescribed altitude for the approach. The airplane was then set to a lower than normal descent path which caused the aircraft to dip below the PAPI light guidance for the visual approach. At this time, the PAPI were three red and one white dot. Suggestions: Despite the flight crew never seeing four red lights from the PAPI system, always correct altitude when the aircraft is seeing 3 red and 1 white PAPI light.
NASA classification — Anomalies
- Inflight Event / Encounter
NASA classification — Assessments
- Contributing Factors / Situations
- Human Factors
- Primary Problem
- Human Factors
ASRS reports are voluntarily submitted, de-identified by NASA, and represent the reporter's perspective. The presence of reports on a topic cannot be used to infer prevalence in the National Airspace System. The authoritative source is the NASA ASRS Database Online at asrs.arc.nasa.gov ↗.