Commercial Fixed Wing
Flight Crew Air Transport Pilot (ATP)
Human-Machine Interface
Aircraft Equipment Problem Less Severe; Deviation / Discrepancy - Procedural Maintenance; Deviation / Discrepancy - Procedural Published Material / Policy
General Maintenance Action
Human Factors; Manuals; Procedure; Aircraft
I unknowingly operated with an expired FMS NAV database and without that item being deferred per the MEL.  During preflight I ensured the active NAV database encompassed the Zulu date of the flight; but those procedures only deal with ensuring the database encompasses the correct month and day and do not address any verification of the year.  When I attempted to load the cleared RNAV SID I discovered that there were none available to choose from; regardless of the departure runway.  I  checked the other database with the same result.  The database dates seemed a little different than I had recently used; though I could not be sure; and I assumed a new database had been loaded.  Thus; I assumed that the database merely omitted the new RNAV SIDs due to some sort of error committed by the vendor.  This did not constitute a corrupt database and no AML entry was required.  The rest of the flight plan fixes; airways and RNAV STAR loaded without incident and appeared to match our EFB charts; so I concluded our only problem was the lack of RNAV SIDs in the database.  I did not contact Maintenance because I did not perceive this to be a maintenance issue.   We had Dispatch file a revised flight plan to reflect the lack of RNAV SID capability.  They did so and provided us with amended IFR dispatch release fuel summary for the modified routing.  We obtained an amended clearance from ATC and advised them of our limitation.  The remainder of the flight proceeded without incident.  Upon arrival I briefed the Mechanic on the problem we experienced. After arrival at the layover hotel I sent an email to NAVDATA describing the problem.   When I awoke in the afternoon I read an email response from NAVDATA stating that the database was one year old.I suspect this situation was directly the result of Maintenance actions the previous day.  During the aircraft layover the number 1 FMC and number 1 CDU were cannibalized for another aircraft.  Replacement units were installed.  I suspect the replacement FMS/CDU was loaded with the year-old database and somehow this was not detected and corrected.  The FOM does not provide any means of determining the correct year of the database because only the first 3 characters of the database ID are decoded.  Any particular meaning of the remaining numbers is not provided; so this incident could have been prevented if the flight crew had been given the means to verify the correct year of the database and if the preflight procedures required such verification.  This incident could also have been prevented by Maintenance identifying and correcting the erroneous database; if indeed that was the source of the error.  This incident might also have been prevented if I had contacted Maintenance regarding the missing SIDs and they had been able to recognize the problem.
FMS database was out of date by one year; and we flew with it.  The only indication of something wrong was the lack of SIDs.  The database title does not include year; but the ID number has the year if you know how to decode the info (we did not).
Air carrier flight crew discovers that the FMS data base is missing the RNAV departures for their airport although the effective dates seem correct.  Dispatch refiles via non RNAV SID and the flight departs.  It is later determined that the database was one year out of date.