Narrative:

On descent into bur; I believe ATC issued us a descent to 4;000 feet. That's what my first officer and I understood; and that's what I believe I read back. We were making a slow descent to that altitude in VFR conditions over the mountains approximately 15 miles northwest of the airport when ATC said they had a low altitude alert on us and told us to climb to 5;000 feet. We did so. ATC asked us what we believed our issued clearance limit was and I told them 4;000 feet. They told us to maintain 5;000 feet and then issued the descent to 4;000 feet about five miles later. They never said anything else about the matter.

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Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: B737 flight crew and SCT Approach Controller reported a low altitude alert issued during a period of increased traffic.

Narrative: On descent into BUR; I believe ATC issued us a descent to 4;000 feet. That's what my First Officer and I understood; and that's what I believe I read back. We were making a slow descent to that altitude in VFR conditions over the mountains approximately 15 miles northwest of the airport when ATC said they had a Low Altitude Alert on us and told us to climb to 5;000 feet. We did so. ATC asked us what we believed our issued clearance limit was and I told them 4;000 feet. They told us to maintain 5;000 feet and then issued the descent to 4;000 feet about five miles later. They never said anything else about the matter.

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.