Narrative:

We departed teb and we're just in the departure phase of flight. We were very busy vectoring etc.; and at some point the controller said to go direct to gayel (he said the name not the phonic spelling). I was the non-flying pilot so I looked in our FMS route for the fix but it wasn't showing as one of our route fixes. I looked in the clearance we got before we left and we did have it as part of our clearance so we are not sure why it wasn't there. To get started on course; I typed gayle in the FMS which was what I had written for the clearance I received on the ground (in the printed version of our flight plan it showed gayel). The plane started tracking to gayle which was only a very slight turn to the left (so didn't stand out as being wrong fix) and then I went to plug in the Q airway that we had from gayel to cfb [VOR]. The FMS was not accepting the airway (I found out later because I had gayle and not gayel as the connecting fix). About that time ATC told us again to go direct to gayel (he used the name again and not the phonetic spelling). I told him we are going direct to gayle and he replied no you're not. Right as he started saying that; I looked on the printed version and saw that I had the [wrong spelling] typed into the FMS. I then put in the correct fix and we were on course. The controller never said anymore about the issue nor did he say to call. I think the biggest thing I can do to make sure this doesn't happen again is to pull up the plan view on the mfd to see the big picture. If I would have done this I would have seen that [the] intersection is quite a ways off our route to where we were going. Another catch would have been to notice on the FMS legs at the distance to that fix. It really points out to me how much I need to always question what's going on and not let complacency creep in as letting such a subtle thing as switching 2 letters around to spell the same name can drive you to the wrong fix. One of the biggest flags was when the FMS wasn't accepting the airway off of gayle.

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Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: Medium Transport aircraft flight crew reported entering the RNAV waypoint GAYLE instead of GAYEL in the FMS during departure form TEB; resulting in a heading deviation. First Officer stated the waypoint was misspelled on the flight release.

Narrative: We departed TEB and we're just in the departure phase of flight. We were very busy vectoring etc.; and at some point the controller said to go direct to GAYEL (he said the name not the phonic spelling). I was the non-flying pilot so I looked in our FMS route for the fix but it wasn't showing as one of our route fixes. I looked in the clearance we got before we left and we did have it as part of our clearance so we are not sure why it wasn't there. To get started on course; I typed GAYLE in the FMS which was what I had written for the clearance I received on the ground (In the printed version of our flight plan it showed GAYEL). The plane started tracking to GAYLE which was only a very slight turn to the left (so didn't stand out as being wrong fix) and then I went to plug in the Q airway that we had from GAYEL to CFB [VOR]. The FMS was not accepting the airway (I found out later because I had GAYLE and not GAYEL as the connecting fix). About that time ATC told us again to go direct to GAYEL (he used the name again and not the phonetic spelling). I told him we are going direct to GAYLE and he replied no you're not. Right as he started saying that; I looked on the printed version and saw that I had the [wrong spelling] typed into the FMS. I then put in the correct fix and we were on course. The controller never said anymore about the issue nor did he say to call. I think the biggest thing I can do to make sure this doesn't happen again is to pull up the PLAN view on the MFD to see the big picture. If I would have done this I would have seen that [the] intersection is quite a ways off our route to where we were going. Another catch would have been to notice on the FMS LEGS at the distance to that fix. It really points out to me how much I need to always question what's going on and not let complacency creep in as letting such a subtle thing as switching 2 letters around to spell the same name can drive you to the wrong fix. One of the biggest flags was when the FMS wasn't accepting the airway off of GAYLE.

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.