Narrative:

Arriving paris on the DVL4W arrival. Merue transition we reached waypoint PG525; the first officer (pilot flying) then turned to heading 109 degrees. In just a few miles the ATC controller asked our heading then almost immediately gave us our turn and clearance onto the final approach. After landing it occurred to us that at waypoint PG525 it is really depicted to be a track and not a magnetic heading. Furthermore; I am in what I believe is the very common habit of deleting a 'vector' waypoint in order to prevent the legacy FMC from failing to compute all the estimated waypoint times; which it does now with near complete regularity. The 'vector' waypoint is co-located at this point in the FMC. This perhaps led us to assume it should be a heading; rather than a track. In my experience; nine times out of ten on this approach it becomes a moot point with radar vectors. In the future; I will review and brief this part of the chart with greater care; especially when I delete a 'vector' from the legs page. It would not have been necessary to delete a vector waypoint from a pegasus computer. The 2 am fatigue certainly contributed to this error.

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Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: A B767-300 crew deleted an expect vector leg after the PG525 waypoint on the LFPG/CDG DVL4W arrival. The aircraft apparently did not track accurately prompting ATC to query the heading and then issue a vector.

Narrative: Arriving Paris on the DVL4W Arrival. MERUE transition we reached waypoint PG525; the First Officer (pilot flying) then turned to heading 109 degrees. In just a few miles the ATC Controller asked our heading then almost immediately gave us our turn and clearance onto the final approach. After landing it occurred to us that at waypoint PG525 it is really depicted to be a track and not a magnetic heading. Furthermore; I am in what I believe is the very common habit of deleting a 'vector' waypoint in order to prevent the legacy FMC from failing to compute all the estimated waypoint times; which it does now with near complete regularity. The 'vector' waypoint is co-located at this point in the FMC. This perhaps led us to assume it should be a heading; rather than a track. In my experience; nine times out of ten on this approach it becomes a moot point with radar vectors. In the future; I will review and brief this part of the chart with greater care; especially when I delete a 'vector' from the legs page. It would not have been necessary to delete a vector waypoint from a Pegasus computer. The 2 AM fatigue certainly contributed to this error.

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.