A319
Flight Crew Air Transport Pilot (ATP)
Flight Crew Last 90 Days 225; Flight Crew Total 18500; Flight Crew Type 12400
Situational Awareness
Deviation - Track / Heading All Types; Deviation / Discrepancy - Procedural Published Material / Policy
Air Traffic Control Issued New Clearance; Flight Crew Returned To Clearance
Aircraft; Human Factors
I report this not really even sure if we erred; or the NAV database erred; or none of the above but the event is worthy of mention given the history of similar NOTAMed issues and a trend I see that is a little disconcerting. I was pilot not flying on the EWR 1 22R departure. The pilot flying chose to fly the departure in NAV. I've never thought that that is a great idea; and I remember from a year or so ago that there was a NOTAM prohibiting NAV for EWR departures because Airbus NAV was too sloppy for peoples' comfort. Regardless; that NOTAM no longer exists and I tuned the raw data to back-up NAV; so I think the pilot flying deserves to fly as the pilot flying chooses. Anyway; after takeoff; the procedure is a 190 heading until 2.3 DME off I-LSQ (I think that's it) localizer then a right turn to 220 heading. Usually about the time you make the right turn at 2.3 DME; ATC gives you a heading and altitude change and away you go. In addition; as these turns are being made; frequencies are changing; gear is coming up; etc. This time I noticed that; coinciding with a frequency change and new clearance; we flew past the 2.3 DME fix on the 190 heading. Since ATC was in the midst of a heading assignment to 250 heading; I'm not even sure a deviation took place; and I'm quite sure there was no traffic conflict since we were talking to the Controller; but in any case; we continued the 190 heading to over 3.0 DME! I cannot say with any certainty whether the NAV was commanding the correct turn or not; nor whether the pilot flying was paying more attention to the ATC transmission than the EWR 1 ground track; but I can tell you that we were at least .7 DME beyond the turn point before ATC completed our new heading clearance. Since Airbus NAV has been flagged in the past for imprecise adherence to this departure; I thought I'd mention this to see if this is again an issue. If the lack of precision in our departure was of our own doing; then my other concern is worth noting. Since we updated our FMGC's to the current version that allows FIX radial and DME rings to be depicted on the ND; I have had several fellow pilots fail to tune raw data for departures or engine failure procedures. Although I suppose that these situational awareness tools are as accurate as anything else depicted on our screens; the fact that people will operate with only circles and lines drawn rather than tuning actual radios and setting radials for real makes me more than a little uncomfortable. It's as if once we got the toys and pretty pictures we've decided that it's too much hassle to set actual radios. I hate to think about needing real raw data when the situation calls; and all we have is a memory of a pretty picture that once existed when we sat at the gate. In the incident that prompts this report; pilot flying had drawn all those pretty lines as a situational awareness tool. I've got to believe that even though we had the localizer tuned; the combination of NAV sloppiness and a lot of lines drawn on the ND must have actually detracted from situational awareness instead of improving it. I believe our path would have been as expected if we had tuned the localizer and taken off in heading. When you alone are calling the turns based on raw data; people with whom I fly seem to nail it. All these other distractions that we try to incorporate should be minimized.
A319 Captain reports a possible track deviation during the EWR 1 departure from Runway 22R and suspects that the created waypoints to comply with the procedure were not accurate enough.