Narrative:

This event began at the gate at ord. My first officer; who has less than 150 hours on the dc-9; had loaded the FMS. While checking our route; we discovered several problems; with points repeating themselves; etc. I elected to reload the route; asking him to read me the clearance and observe. He read me the clearance; and spelled the waypoints for me as I loaded the FMS. During this process I incorrectly entered the waypoint 'adime' as 'adine'. I read the route and legs verbally to the first officer when I completed loading the FMS; I do not know if i articulated 'adime' as 'adine'; but in any event; we didn't catch my error. As I read the total distance on the progress page; we were interupted by the gate agent. After speaking with her; we continued the checklist without ever actually comparing the total distance on the flight plan to the progress page. Doing so might've precluded this event. During climbout; we were given direct to moble; on course. As we approached moble; I was heads down; checking to insure that we could make our filed altitude. My map mode was still in 10 mile range. At moble; we began turning longer than I expected. I put my map mode on a larger scale. Usually; moble; adime; and gerbs intersections form a straight line; but I could see that they didn't on larger scale map mode. As I realized there was a problem; ATC asked where we were turning: I replied that we had a problem with our FMS; and asked for a vector back on course; which ATC provided. I then told the controller that we had incorrectly loaded 'adine' into our FMS instead of 'adime'--he replied that it had happened to other aircraft before. We then continued to adime without further incident. On the ground; I contacted ATC; as requested; and was advised that while no loss of separation had occured; they would be forwarding a report of this incident 'up the chain'. First and foremost; I shouldn't have allowed an interuption of the checklist by the gate agent to distract me from ensuring a comparison of total distance on the progress page with flight plan total distance. Also; if I had increased the scale of my map mode sooner; I might've caught my programming error. Internationally; we compare courses in the FMS to courses on the flight plan; and while this isn't required domestically; comparing the course between moble and adime would've disclosed a problem as well.

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Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: MD80 Captain reports entering the flight plan waypoint ADIME as ADINE which goes undetected until turning toward the incorrect waypoint.

Narrative: This event began at the gate at ORD. My FO; who has less than 150 hours on the DC-9; had loaded the FMS. While checking our route; we discovered several problems; with points repeating themselves; etc. I elected to reload the route; asking him to read me the clearance and observe. He read me the clearance; and spelled the waypoints for me as I loaded the FMS. During this process I incorrectly entered the waypoint 'ADIME' as 'ADINE'. I read the route and legs verbally to the FO when I completed loading the FMS; I do not know if i articulated 'ADIME' as 'ADINE'; but in any event; we didn't catch my error. As I read the total distance on the progress page; we were interupted by the gate agent. After speaking with her; we continued the checklist without ever actually comparing the total distance on the flight plan to the progress page. Doing so might've precluded this event. During climbout; we were given direct to MOBLE; on course. As we approached MOBLE; I was heads down; checking to insure that we could make our filed altitude. My map mode was still in 10 mile range. At MOBLE; we began turning longer than I expected. I put my map mode on a larger scale. Usually; MOBLE; ADIME; and GERBS intersections form a straight line; but I could see that they didn't on larger scale map mode. As I realized there was a problem; ATC asked where we were turning: I replied that we had a problem with our FMS; and asked for a vector back on course; which ATC provided. I then told the Controller that we had incorrectly loaded 'ADINE' into our FMS instead of 'ADIME'--he replied that it had happened to other aircraft before. We then continued to ADIME without further incident. On the ground; I contacted ATC; as requested; and was advised that while no loss of separation had occured; they would be forwarding a report of this incident 'up the chain'. First and foremost; I shouldn't have allowed an interuption of the checklist by the gate agent to distract me from ensuring a comparison of total distance on the progress page with flight plan total distance. Also; if I had increased the scale of my map mode sooner; I might've caught my programming error. Internationally; we compare courses in the FMS to courses on the flight plan; and while this isn't required domestically; comparing the course between MOBLE and ADIME would've disclosed a problem as well.

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.