Flight Crew Air Transport Pilot (ATP)
Flight Crew Last 90 Days 220; Flight Crew Total 24000; Flight Crew Type 6392
Situational Awareness; Workload
Deviation / Discrepancy - Procedural Clearance; Deviation / Discrepancy - Procedural Published Material / Policy; Flight Deck / Cabin / Aircraft Event Other / Unknown; Ground Incursion Taxiway
Flight Crew Became Reoriented
Human Factors; Weather
First Officer was preoccupied with personal shopping on-line before push back. He had a tendency to put in the minimal effort during the whole trip. When we got the pushback; he was behind the whole way out. (I am a little too conflict averse; and should have confronted him earlier about this problem).Anyway; we were going to have to deice; ramp was wet; but not icy; so I planned to taxi to deice pad on one engine. After First Officer got #2 engine running; I asked him to call for taxi and to request a left 270 turnout rather than starting with a turn into the operating engine. He was having trouble copying the clearance and deice frequency; and never did ask for the left 270; so I finally keyed the mike and asked for that myself.Started west to hold short of H at the west end of the ramp; where I stopped as instructed. First Officer was still back at the gate and I was basically solo. He still had not copied the deice control frequency; and was now looking for it on Jeppesen FD Pro while I patiently waited. Second frequency he tried worked; we were told to taxi to the C1 pad for deice. Here is where I made my mistake. We 'always' deice on the Bravo Deice pad; I had both hands full of airplane; saw that C1 was at the left end of the pad; and turned left toward the deice pad [we normally use] to the spot at the left (South) end of the pad. Ramp hollered at us that we were supposed to turn right into the 'Charlie' deice pad. I was able to make a 150 turn back to the right on Hotel; and into the correct pad.Ramp and Iceman were having a discussion that I was the 7th airplane that day to turn the wrong way; and suggested that Iceman emphasize in their instructions that it would be a right turn into the Charlie pad. I was a bit overloaded and basically taxiing solo without much help from my First Officer; but much to my chagrin 'expectation bias' bit me in this case.
B737 Captain reported taxiing to the wrong de-ice pad at DEN because of workload and distraction issues.