EMB ERJ 145 ER/LR
Flight Crew Air Transport Pilot (ATP); Flight Crew Multiengine; Flight Crew Instrument; Flight Crew Flight Instructor
Flight Crew Last 90 Days 150; Flight Crew Total 5000; Flight Crew Type 3000
Human-Machine Interface; Situational Awareness
Deviation - Altitude Crossing Restriction Not Met; Deviation - Altitude Undershoot; Deviation / Discrepancy - Procedural Clearance; Deviation / Discrepancy - Procedural Published Material / Policy
Flight Crew Returned To Clearance
Aircraft; Procedure; Human Factors
While flying the arrival into DFW; we were instructed to descend via the KLNDR1 arrival. As we made the turn by KLNDR; we noticed we were above the altitude published on the chart by about 800 feet. ATC did not query our altitude; and no evasive action was necessary. TCAS was operational and did not trigger any alerts. Leading to this error; we had a number of slight distractions between company reports and talking to the flight attendant. Additionally; these new arrivals impose a very high workload to comply with the numerous altitude and speed restrictions. Many of these altitude restrictions occur during a time period when workload is generally high in the terminal environment and distract us from safely looking out for traffic and dealing with other operational issues at the same time as we are spending most of our attention to making all the altitude and speed restrictions. A small distraction can easily keep us off track with these more complicated descent profiles especially when the aircraft is not equipped with a vertical navigation feature of the autopilot and no autothrottles.
EMB145 First Officer reports missing the KLNDR crossing restriction during the KLNDR1 arrival to DFW and describes how difficult it is to comply with an RNAV STAR in an aircraft without VNAV or autothrottle capability.