An approach controller reported one of several instances of complaints from flight crews about the c...

Narrative:

An E135 checked on [cleared via] the ryymn RNAV star from the northwest. He took the time to complain that the RNAV arrivals were impacting their safety margin as they were continuously heads down in the cockpit working on the complex routing. Spending all your time heads down working on automation instead of flying the airplane has been cited by the FAA multiple times as a factor in incidents. I've had this complaint from multiple carriers about these new procedures and failed to log them. I will try and log more as they come in. I encouraged this pilot to file a complaint with his own safety program as well.these RNAV procedures seem to be a solution to a problem that didn't exist. We are mixing aircraft both on the RNAV and other aircraft off or not capable of the arrival and the different speeds and altitudes can conflict unless you watch it closely.I think it would be better to take just a single post of our 4 post arrivals and reserve it exclusively for RNAV and let the other three posts continue as before. That way we wouldn't run into as many conflicting scenarios.

Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: An Approach Controller reported one of several instances of complaints from flight crews about the complexity of the newer; 'optimized' RNAV STAR procedures into BNA. In this particular instance; the STAR in question was the RYYMN.

Narrative: An E135 checked on [cleared via] the RYYMN RNAV Star from the northwest. He took the time to complain that the RNAV arrivals were impacting their safety margin as they were continuously heads down in the cockpit working on the complex routing. Spending all your time heads down working on automation instead of flying the airplane has been cited by the FAA multiple times as a factor in incidents. I've had this complaint from multiple carriers about these new procedures and failed to log them. I will try and log more as they come in. I encouraged this pilot to file a complaint with his own safety program as well.These RNAV procedures seem to be a solution to a problem that didn't exist. We are mixing aircraft both on the RNAV and other aircraft off or not capable of the arrival and the different speeds and altitudes can conflict unless you watch it closely.I think it would be better to take just a single post of our 4 post arrivals and reserve it exclusively for RNAV and let the other three posts continue as before. That way we wouldn't run into as many conflicting scenarios.

Data retrieved from NASA's ASRS site as of July 2013 and automatically converted to unabbreviated mixed upper/lowercase text. This report is for informational purposes with no guarantee of accuracy. See NASA's ASRS site for official report.

Attributes
ACN	1056219
Time
Date	201212
Local Time Of Day	1201-1800
Place
Locale Reference	BNA.TRACON
State Reference	TN
Aircraft 1
Make Model Name	EMB ERJ 135 ER/LR
Operating Under FAR Part	Part 121
Flight Phase	Final Approach
Route In Use	STAR RYYMN (RNAV)
Flight Plan	IFR
Component
Aircraft Component	FMS/FMC
Person 1
Function	Approach
Qualification	Air Traffic Control Fully Certified
Events
Anomaly	ATC Issue All Types Deviation - Procedural Published Material / Policy

An approach controller reported one of several instances of complaints from flight crews about the complexity of the newer; 'optimized' RNAV STAR procedures into bna. In this particular instance; the STAR in question was the ryymn.