Narrative:

The aircraft was a single FMS aircraft; with the FMS completely MEL'd; causing us to navigate using conventional VOR navigation. This sounded fun at first; because we were flying 'old school'; but we quickly realized how much situational awareness was lost. We did a great job of planning ahead. We had briefed our VOR changeover points and which radials we would be flying off of the next fix. The navigation mode didn't do a very good job of holding a radial; regardless of the distance from the VOR. However; we decided to use heading mode to manually track a radial; so as to prevent the airplane from constantly 'chasing' the needles.we began our descent; and were cleared to descend via the [arrival]. At some point along the way; two things happened. First; we must have miscalculated the DME of [an intersection]; and secondly; we must have miscalculated the descent required to get down. We were close; and our groundspeed must have been off due to the proximity of the VOR. We cross checked after we began our descent; and both decided we were 'a little high' so; we increased our rate of descent.then; all hell broke loose. We were told to expect holding at [a waypoint]. We were immediately given instructions to hold 'south as published'; which immediately sent us into a high workload/high stress environment; we had zero communication with dispatch; zero fuel numbers at destination or alternate; no weather info for our alternate. I immediately started to look up the chart for arinc to try and get in touch with dispatch. At the same time; the first officer (first officer) was briefing the hold; and at that same time; I was calculating fuel to alternate and a bingo hold fuel to head to our [alternate]. We were also scrambling to find an alternate that might be closer; and again; we didn't have much information without dispatch/ACARS.during all this; the controller asked us to expedite descent; and a short minute later we realized we were around 14;000ft. He then gave us a descent to 9000 to enter the hold at [a different VOR]. He reminded us that [the crossing altitude] was at 11;000; not at or above. We apologized; said we had gotten busy; to which he replied 'no worries guys'. We made about 3 laps in the hold; determined our bingo fuel number to be about 3100lbs; (we left hold at 3;200); and proceeded to [destination] without further incident.

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Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: Flight crew reported being dispatched with no operable FMS on board which greatly increased workload.

Narrative: The aircraft was a single FMS aircraft; with the FMS completely MEL'd; causing us to navigate using conventional VOR navigation. This sounded fun at first; because we were flying 'old school'; but we quickly realized how much situational awareness was lost. We did a great job of planning ahead. We had briefed our VOR changeover points and which radials we would be flying off of the next fix. The NAV mode didn't do a very good job of holding a radial; regardless of the distance from the VOR. However; we decided to use HDG mode to manually track a radial; so as to prevent the airplane from constantly 'chasing' the needles.We began our descent; and were cleared to descend via the [arrival]. At some point along the way; two things happened. First; we must have miscalculated the DME of [an intersection]; and secondly; we must have miscalculated the descent required to get down. We were close; and our groundspeed must have been off due to the proximity of the VOR. We cross checked after we began our descent; and both decided we were 'a little high' so; we increased our rate of descent.Then; all hell broke loose. We were told to expect holding at [a waypoint]. We were immediately given instructions to hold 'South as Published'; which immediately sent us into a high workload/high stress environment; We had zero communication with Dispatch; zero fuel numbers at destination or alternate; no weather info for our alternate. I immediately started to look up the chart for ARINC to try and get in touch with Dispatch. At the same time; the First Officer (FO) was briefing the hold; and at that same time; I was calculating fuel to alternate and a bingo hold fuel to head to our [alternate]. We were also scrambling to find an alternate that might be closer; and again; we didn't have much information without Dispatch/ACARS.During all this; the controller asked us to expedite descent; and a short minute later we realized we were around 14;000ft. He then gave us a descent to 9000 to enter the hold at [a different VOR]. He reminded us that [the crossing altitude] was AT 11;000; not at or above. We apologized; said we had gotten busy; to which he replied 'no worries guys'. We made about 3 laps in the hold; determined our bingo fuel number to be about 3100lbs; (we left hold at 3;200); and proceeded to [destination] without further incident.

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.