Narrative:

We took off shortly after an airbus had taken off. Our SID was the BNYRD4 departure. While initially climbing out we encountered what could be described as moderate turbulence from the wake of the previously departed aircraft. The autopilot had already been engaged to fly the RNAV. I elected to disengage the autopilot momentarily in case the wake turbulence became more severe. I must have inadvertently taken the aircraft off its heading for the SID. After the wake turbulence subsided the autopilot was re-engaged. The autopilot and FMS coupling was quickly noted. At this time I became distracted by the first officer who was already setting up for our arrival. This is a very quick flight and the first officer might have wanted to prepare earlier as he was behind on another flight to this same destination. Shortly after the autopilot was re-engaged departure queried us why we were turning to a certain heading and that we were supposed to be on the BNYRD4. I said we were and the FMS was doing it. He amended our altitude from 17000 to 10000 and gave us a new heading. Upon further looking at the situation I discovered the aircraft was taken off the SID just enough when I clicked the autopilot off that when I re-engaged it; it locked onto a different segment of the BNYRD4 departure segment. The flight continued without further event.this was a human factor mistake. What the autopilot and FMS are supposed to do should always be confirmed by both crew members. Sometimes we can be lulled into complacency because the automation works so well in most circumstances. Throw in a high workload environment (in this case a very quick flight) and a momentary distraction from normal ops and this can be a recipe of what happened to us. Thankfully there was no traffic conflict I know of from this. Lesson learned.

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Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: CRJ flight crew reported a track deviation resulted on departure from PHX because of distractions from a wake turbulence encounter from a preceding Airbus.

Narrative: We took off shortly after an Airbus had taken off. Our SID was the BNYRD4 departure. While initially climbing out we encountered what could be described as moderate turbulence from the wake of the previously departed aircraft. The autopilot had already been engaged to fly the RNAV. I elected to disengage the autopilot momentarily in case the wake turbulence became more severe. I must have inadvertently taken the aircraft off its heading for the SID. After the wake turbulence subsided the autopilot was re-engaged. The autopilot and FMS coupling was quickly noted. At this time I became distracted by the FO who was already setting up for our arrival. This is a very quick flight and the FO might have wanted to prepare earlier as he was behind on another flight to this same destination. Shortly after the autopilot was re-engaged departure queried us why we were turning to a certain heading and that we were supposed to be on the BNYRD4. I said we were and the FMS was doing it. He amended our altitude from 17000 to 10000 and gave us a new heading. Upon further looking at the situation I discovered the aircraft was taken off the SID just enough when I clicked the autopilot off that when I re-engaged it; it locked onto a different segment of the BNYRD4 departure segment. The flight continued without further event.This was a human factor mistake. What the autopilot and FMS are supposed to do should always be confirmed by both crew members. Sometimes we can be lulled into complacency because the automation works so well in most circumstances. Throw in a high workload environment (in this case a very quick flight) and a momentary distraction from normal ops and this can be a recipe of what happened to us. Thankfully there was no traffic conflict I know of from this. Lesson learned.

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.