Narrative:

First leg; first day; new first officer (first officer); short flight. I wanted to get ahead so I loaded and briefed the expected arrival and approach into san. I selected rnpz to runway 27 expecting to fly a visual approach but got distracted and did not select the vydda transition. I don't recall exactly what the distraction was but I was [distracted]. The a flight attendant (F/a) was reporting that the wifi was inoperative. A call from dispatch to remove an MEL and being notified by ops that the tower in san had been evacuated for smoke and that we would be taking a delay. The discrepancy was not discovered in the brief that we accomplished in [departure airport]. On the descent with socal when they cleared us for the approach; vddda and okain were not loaded so we ended up going direct sayae from lyndi. Abeam vydda socal asked if we were on a visual. We responded that we were on the rnpz; so they just cleared us for the visual approach and stated; 'you're supposed to go over vydda;' then switched us to tower. The remainder of flight was uneventful. This is a textbook case of being distracted while performing a critical programming task; making a mistake and then not catching it in a rushed brief on the ground with the door open. I am certain that if I had programmed the FMC while at altitude with the door closed in a sanitized environment this error would not have occurred.

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Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: B737-700 Captain reported a track deviation occurred when the FMC was improperly programmed.

Narrative: First leg; first day; new First Officer (F/O); short flight. I wanted to get ahead so I loaded and briefed the expected arrival and approach into SAN. I selected RNPZ to Runway 27 expecting to fly a visual approach but got distracted and did not select the VYDDA transition. I don't recall exactly what the distraction was but I was [distracted]. The A Flight Attendant (F/A) was reporting that the WIFI was inoperative. A call from Dispatch to remove an MEL and being notified by Ops that the Tower in SAN had been evacuated for smoke and that we would be taking a delay. The discrepancy was not discovered in the brief that we accomplished in [departure airport]. On the descent with SoCal when they cleared us for the approach; VDDDA and OKAIN were not loaded so we ended up going direct SAYAE from LYNDI. Abeam VYDDA SoCal asked if we were on a visual. We responded that we were on the RNPZ; so they just cleared us for the visual approach and stated; 'You're supposed to go over VYDDA;' then switched us to Tower. The remainder of flight was uneventful. This is a textbook case of being distracted while performing a critical programming task; making a mistake and then not catching it in a rushed brief on the ground with the door open. I am certain that if I had programmed the FMC while at altitude with the door closed in a sanitized environment this error would not have occurred.

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.