B737-700
Flight Crew Air Transport Pilot (ATP)
Flight Crew Last 90 Days 179
Human-Machine Interface; Situational Awareness
ATC Issue All Types; Deviation - Altitude Crossing Restriction Not Met; Deviation - Track / Heading All Types; Deviation / Discrepancy - Procedural Clearance
Air Traffic Control Issued New Clearance; Flight Crew Became Reoriented
Human Factors; Procedure
Coming into DEN; four different Controllers in rapid succession gave us four different arrivals and runways. The First Officer (FO); who was very 'box' oriented; started programming and I verified. With layer after layer of changes; however; we wound up with so much garbage; that we couldn't get it to do what we needed it to do. The arrival was right but we couldn't change the runway. We'd been given descend via the arrival but then it changed and so did the runway.  In the meantime; we're flying along at FL300 expecting VNAV to start us down but with the route all messed up it didn't. Center had to give us a 360 to get down to cross QUAIL at 17;000 feet. We eventually had to manually start deleting lines in the FMS to clear up things. I actually read the arrival to the FO and he verified it but we didn't see the highlighted waypoints pages down past the runway. He noticed it still said 'MOD' Route on top and was trying to figure out how to fix all that too when they gave a heading to FQF.  So after all that work and confusion; four arrival changes and runways; they threw it all out and gave us direct FQF!  Even after the vector; the FO kept trying to fix the box and I had to tell him to quit messing with it as we're doing an ILS in IMC to 4 OVC. There are times that all this stuff just makes things more difficult than just flying the airplane!
A B737-700 Captain reports clearance for four different arrivals to DEN in rapid succession by four different controllers; along with runway changes. The First Officer attempts to reprogram the FMC but becomes confused. ATC eventually issues a clearance direct to FQF.