Regional Jet 900 (CRJ900)
Confusion; Situational Awareness; Workload
Deviation - Track / Heading All Types; Deviation / Discrepancy - Procedural Clearance
Flight Crew Became Reoriented; Flight Crew Returned To Clearance
Human Factors; Procedure
Roughly 30nm from ZIEBR; ATC asked us if we were direct BKW at the time. I responded that we were never given direct BKW and were on our filed course. ATC responded that his paperwork showed our course to be SHIPR DCT BKW. I told him our paperwork showed SDF FEDRA2 SHIPR DCT ZIEBR J526 BKW J42 GVE PAATS2 PHL. I told him I would have to check with the company about the discrepancy. He then cleared us direct to BKW. This ATC controller then told me that this has apparently happened a lot with our company. We continued to KPHL uneventfully. This event occurred because the current PDC clearance system enables easy confusion between filed route and cleared route. In a highly saturated busy cockpit environment; (such as the one we were in during our initial setup and departure) it is simply too easy to confuse the two. In this case; the new amended clearance route was -FEDRA2 SHIPR BKW -. This amended clearance was broken up between the bottom of page 1 and the top of page 2 of our PDC. If you review the actual PDC after our amended clearance it then continues with; KSDF FEDRA2 SHIPR ZIEBR* J526 BKW J42 GVE ...KPHL. *CLIMB VIA SID CLIMB VIA SID* DEPARTURE CONTROL 132.07 DEPARTURE CONTROL. The repeat of our incomplete filed flight plan along with the use of *'s only add to the confusion. Add all of this together with a fast moving; highly saturated cockpit; the opportunity for confusion is elevated. PDC clearances need to more clearly identify the actual cleared route. In this case the change in route in the PDC was just 1 line really. However it was spilt between page 1 and page 2 which made it all too easy to inadvertently skip over. When one calls for a clearance via normal comms; one is not read back the filed route. They are simply read back the cleared route. I feel this would be the most obvious fix. Personally; I will be more cautions when reviewing PDCs and will call over regular comms whenever I see a reroute.
CRJ-900 Captain reported a track deviation due to what he termed a confusing PDC presentation.