Commercial Fixed Wing
Flight Crew Air Transport Pilot (ATP); Flight Crew Instrument; Flight Crew Multiengine
Flight Crew Last 90 Days 90; Flight Crew Type 8000
Ground Event / Encounter Ground Equipment Issue; No Specific Anomaly Occurred Unwanted Situation
General None Reported / Taken
ATC Equipment / Nav Facility / Buildings
When preflight planning; there is no way to accurately know which runway to expect at MHT. There is no digital ATIS. Weather for preflight planning is by a METAR.  This does give us the weather but not a runway.  Sometimes it is easy to know which runway to expect; but when the winds are light or calm there is no way of knowing. This would not be too much of a problem for many airports; but MHT uses complex RNAV arrivals with a branch point. We brief ahead of time. VHF ATIS is not in radio range at the normal time of our briefing. En route when the VHF ATIS is obtained it is sometimes necessary to change the runway which changes the arrival from the branch point. This is usually done while on the arrival in a high workload environment. Without the digital ATIS coupled with complex RNAV arrivals; we have the possibility of errors due to debriefing and reprogramming the FMC.
Air carrier First Officer reported MHT airport's lack of digital ATIS makes it difficult to properly prepare for the approach.