Narrative:

This report does not identify any far or SOP violation; it involves a serious lack of information available to the flight crew prior to and during this flight. The crew was aware of the threat of severe weather prior to the flight and agreed with the addition of a significant amount of reserve fuel for deviations and holding. The amount of fuel added was sufficient for the conditions and events encountered during the flight. Over about denver; we were given a re-route by ATC for weather ahead. Upon transmitting this re-route to dispatch; the dispatcher sent us an ACARS message telling us that he didn't understand the re-route as there was nothing significant along our planned route. We complied with the ATC re-route which took us significantly south of our planned route. Over gck we were given a 'present position' hold due to 'sector saturation' ahead. We held at this point for one hour. We constantly were asking both dispatch and ATC for weather information and continued to receive conflicting reports. We had no way of obtaining any real time weather radar pictures to determine either the scope or severity of the weather ahead. Communications with dispatch were consistently more optimistic than reports by ATC or other pilots. We honestly did not know who or what to believe about the weather between us and ord. We penetrated a line of thunderstorms in the area of southern missouri which looked to be the best route according to our weather radar. We encountered moderate turbulence for a period of twenty minutes until we reached the other side of the line. Following this encounter; we again queried dispatch about the weather between our present position and ord and were told that we had 'a clear shot.' that did not prove to be the case as there were numerous deviations necessary along our arrival route. This serious lack of good weather data is inexcusable in 2011 where this data is readily available to anyone with an iphone. The fact that [my major] airline lacks the ability to provide us this crucial safety information is beyond belief. My flight planning in the future will take this lack of information and dissemination of faulty and inaccurate information by those whom are trusted to provide this information; into consideration. In addition; we were once again provided false information by our onboard FMC when we were issued the benky 1 arrival into chicago. When this (and other RNAV arrivals) are entered into the FMC; an error of over 100 miles; 1;000 pounds of fuel; and 30 minutes of flight time is displayed on the prog page. I have written other fsap reports on this problem; written to the alpa safety committee; and written to the FAA director of ATC operations about this problem and the only satisfactory solution is to avoid use of these arrivals. We originally requested and were issued the janesville 5 arrival but that was changed by ATC as a part of our re-route. Again; this is a serious safety problem which is induced by the use of these new RNAV arrivals and apparently; is unique to the fmcs in [our] aircraft. There must be some software solution to this problem; which during this particular flight; introduced errors in our FMC which could have significantly affected the outcome of this flight.

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Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: An air carrier Captain lamented the lack of real time data link weather information in his cockpit.

Narrative: This report does not identify any FAR or SOP violation; it involves a serious lack of information available to the flight crew prior to and during this flight. The crew was aware of the threat of severe weather prior to the flight and agreed with the addition of a significant amount of reserve fuel for deviations and holding. The amount of fuel added was sufficient for the conditions and events encountered during the flight. Over about Denver; we were given a re-route by ATC for weather ahead. Upon transmitting this re-route to Dispatch; the Dispatcher sent us an ACARS message telling us that he didn't understand the re-route as there was nothing significant along our planned route. We complied with the ATC re-route which took us significantly south of our planned route. Over GCK we were given a 'present position' hold due to 'sector saturation' ahead. We held at this point for one hour. We constantly were asking both Dispatch and ATC for weather information and continued to receive conflicting reports. We had no way of obtaining any real time weather radar pictures to determine either the scope or severity of the weather ahead. Communications with Dispatch were consistently more optimistic than reports by ATC or other pilots. We honestly did not know who or what to believe about the weather between us and ORD. We penetrated a line of thunderstorms in the area of southern Missouri which looked to be the best route according to our weather radar. We encountered moderate turbulence for a period of twenty minutes until we reached the other side of the line. Following this encounter; we again queried Dispatch about the weather between our present position and ORD and were told that we had 'a clear shot.' That did not prove to be the case as there were numerous deviations necessary along our arrival route. This serious lack of good weather data is inexcusable in 2011 where this data is readily available to anyone with an iPhone. The fact that [my major] airline lacks the ability to provide us this crucial safety information is beyond belief. My flight planning in the future will take this lack of information and dissemination of faulty and inaccurate information by those whom are trusted to provide this information; into consideration. In addition; we were once again provided FALSE information by our onboard FMC when we were issued the Benky 1 arrival into Chicago. When this (and other RNAV arrivals) are entered into the FMC; an error of over 100 miles; 1;000 LBS of fuel; and 30 minutes of flight time is displayed on the PROG page. I have written other FSAP reports on this problem; written to the ALPA Safety Committee; and written to the FAA Director of ATC Operations about this problem and the only satisfactory solution is to avoid use of these arrivals. We originally requested and were issued the Janesville 5 arrival but that was changed by ATC as a part of our re-route. Again; this is a serious safety problem which is induced by the use of these new RNAV arrivals and apparently; is unique to the FMCs in [our] aircraft. There must be some software solution to this problem; which during this particular flight; introduced errors in our FMC which could have significantly affected the outcome of this flight.

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.