A B737-700 captain reports clearance for four different arrivals to den in rapid succession by four ...

Narrative:

Coming into den; four different controllers in rapid succession gave us four different arrivals and runways. The first officer (first officer); who was very 'box' oriented; started programming and I verified. With layer after layer of changes; however; we wound up with so much garbage; that we couldn't get it to do what we needed it to do. The arrival was right but we couldn't change the runway. We'd been given descend via the arrival but then it changed and so did the runway. In the meantime; we're flying along at FL300 expecting VNAV to start us down but with the route all messed up it didn't. Center had to give us a 360 to get down to cross quail at 17;000 feet. We eventually had to manually start deleting lines in the FMS to clear up things. I actually read the arrival to the first officer and he verified it but we didn't see the highlighted waypoints pages down past the runway. He noticed it still said 'mod' route on top and was trying to figure out how to fix all that too when they gave a heading to fqf. So after all that work and confusion; four arrival changes and runways; they threw it all out and gave us direct fqf! Even after the vector; the first officer kept trying to fix the box and I had to tell him to quit messing with it as we're doing an ILS in IMC to 4 ovc. There are times that all this stuff just makes things more difficult than just flying the airplane!

Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: A B737-700 Captain reports clearance for four different arrivals to DEN in rapid succession by four different controllers; along with runway changes. The First Officer attempts to reprogram the FMC but becomes confused. ATC eventually issues a clearance direct to FQF.

Narrative: Coming into DEN; four different Controllers in rapid succession gave us four different arrivals and runways. The First Officer (FO); who was very 'box' oriented; started programming and I verified. With layer after layer of changes; however; we wound up with so much garbage; that we couldn't get it to do what we needed it to do. The arrival was right but we couldn't change the runway. We'd been given descend via the arrival but then it changed and so did the runway. In the meantime; we're flying along at FL300 expecting VNAV to start us down but with the route all messed up it didn't. Center had to give us a 360 to get down to cross QUAIL at 17;000 feet. We eventually had to manually start deleting lines in the FMS to clear up things. I actually read the arrival to the FO and he verified it but we didn't see the highlighted waypoints pages down past the runway. He noticed it still said 'MOD' Route on top and was trying to figure out how to fix all that too when they gave a heading to FQF. So after all that work and confusion; four arrival changes and runways; they threw it all out and gave us direct FQF! Even after the vector; the FO kept trying to fix the box and I had to tell him to quit messing with it as we're doing an ILS in IMC to 4 OVC. There are times that all this stuff just makes things more difficult than just flying the airplane!

Data retrieved from NASA's ASRS site 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	1259691
Time
Date	201505
Local Time Of Day	0601-1200
Place
Locale Reference	DEN.Airport
State Reference	CO
Environment
Flight Conditions	VMC
Light	Daylight
Aircraft 1
Make Model Name	B737-700
Operating Under FAR Part	Part 121
Flight Phase	Descent
Flight Plan	IFR
Component
Aircraft Component	FMS/FMC
Person 1
Function	Captain Pilot Flying
Qualification	Flight Crew Air Transport Pilot (ATP)
Experience	Flight Crew Last 90 Days 179
Events
Anomaly	ATC Issue All Types Deviation - Altitude Crossing Restriction Not Met Deviation - Procedural Clearance Deviation - Track / Heading All Types

A B737-700 captain reports clearance for four different arrivals to den in rapid succession by four different controllers; along with runway changes. The first officer attempts to reprogram the FMC but becomes confused. ATC eventually issues a clearance direct to fqf.