B737-800
Flight Crew Instrument; Flight Crew Multiengine; Flight Crew Air Transport Pilot (ATP)
Flight Crew Total 21000
Situational Awareness; Distraction
Deviation / Discrepancy - Procedural Published Material / Policy; Inflight Event / Encounter Wake Vortex Encounter
Flight Crew Became Reoriented
Procedure; Environment - Non Weather Related; Human Factors
On approach behind a heavy aircraft. Experiencing wake turbulence. Maintained slightly high on approach in attempt to avoid wake turbulence. Configured aircraft for landing but did not arm spoilers. First Officer did not catch the error while running checklist. Deployed spoilers manually after touching down. Distraction due to wake turbulence. Batch processing of new checklist causes a breakdown in the last 40 years of checklist procedure. Learned that 'flaps 30; below the line' is one word.
B737-800 Captain reported landing with the spoilers not armed after being distracted by a wake turbulence encounter on approach to DFW.