Narrative:

Once again; we in the cockpit were operating from a flight plan that was different from the one that was filed with ATC. The flight plan we had on board and that was uploaded by datalink in lhr had one route after coast-in. The flight plan that was transmitted to ATC had another route after coast-in. Interesting how we caught it... We arrived at the airplane with release 1 in hand. As the relief pilot; I had marked it up appropriately for use as a working flight plan. For whatever reason; the flying pilots were unable to uplink the release 1 flight plan to the FMC. So they called dispatch on the satphone and were told that the same (!) flight plan would be reloaded for uplink. A few moments later; a flight plan was successfully uplinked to the FMC. A few moments after that; the gate agent brought a new set of flight plans; release 2; to the cockpit. I glanced over the route info at the bottom of the second flight plan; as did the other copilot; and neither of us caught the different routing. We were not expecting to see a different routing; because dispatch had told us that they were simply reloading the same flight plan; but that because it was a second load; it would reflect release 2. As we approached the coast in fix several hours later; the captain noticed the difference in distance between two fixes after coast in; and how they were different in the FMC from the flight plan. Remember; we were working off the marked up original release 1 flight plan - not the subsequent release 2 flight plan. As part of his investigation into the discrepancy; the captain queried edmonton about the route; and discovered the error at that point. We then corrected the route in the FMC; and all was well going forward from there. Important point...had we been using the second print out as our working copy; there would have been no discrepancy between the flight plan distance and the FMC distance; and our first clue would have been the call from edmonton telling us we had a potential gross navigation error. In other words; we had been set up by dispatch for a violation. They had sent us one flight plan; and had sent ATC another. It's a good thing we'd already marked up the first release and chose to use that as our working flight plan. And kudos to the captain for paying attention to the 8-mile difference between the FMC distance and the flight plan distance between two points after coast-in.

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Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: Dispatch provided the flight crew of a B777 with a second release with a different routing than the first; which had already been filed with ATC.

Narrative: Once again; we in the cockpit were operating from a flight plan that was different from the one that was filed with ATC. The flight plan we had on board and that was uploaded by datalink in LHR had one route after coast-in. The flight plan that was transmitted to ATC had another route after coast-in. Interesting how we caught it... we arrived at the airplane with release 1 in hand. As the Relief Pilot; I had marked it up appropriately for use as a working flight plan. For whatever reason; the flying pilots were unable to uplink the release 1 flight plan to the FMC. So they called dispatch on the SatPhone and were told that the same (!) flight plan would be reloaded for uplink. A few moments later; a flight plan was successfully uplinked to the FMC. A few moments after that; the gate agent brought a new set of flight plans; release 2; to the cockpit. I glanced over the route info at the bottom of the second flight plan; as did the other copilot; and neither of us caught the different routing. We were not expecting to see a different routing; because dispatch had told us that they were simply reloading the same flight plan; but that because it was a second load; it would reflect release 2. As we approached the coast in fix several hours later; the Captain noticed the difference in distance between two fixes after coast in; and how they were different in the FMC from the flight plan. Remember; we were working off the marked up original release 1 flight plan - NOT the subsequent release 2 flight plan. As part of his investigation into the discrepancy; the Captain queried Edmonton about the route; and discovered the error at that point. We then corrected the route in the FMC; and all was well going forward from there. Important point...had we been using the second print out as our working copy; there would have been no discrepancy between the flight plan distance and the FMC distance; and our first clue would have been the call from Edmonton telling us we had a potential gross navigation error. In other words; we had been set up by dispatch for a violation. They had sent us one flight plan; and had sent ATC another. It's a good thing we'd already marked up the first release and chose to use that as our working flight plan. And kudos to the Captain for paying attention to the 8-mile difference between the FMC distance and the flight plan distance between two points after coast-in.

Data retrieved from NASA's ASRS site as of April 2012 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.