Airline flight crew was advised of a track deviation in flight while navigation to hrtun intersectio...

Narrative:

During preflight; non-standard flight plan; captain retrieved and typed in fixes from pre departure clearance while I wasn't there. When I returned I looked at pre departure clearance and then briefed the routing as captain qc'd [quality checked/controlled] the fixes in the box. Phonetically called out fix hrtun (hurtin). Captain had misspelled it as hurtn. Center cleared us direct hrtun. I pulled up the fix to top of the page; we confirmed it; and selected it. A couple of minutes later; ATC queried our heading. We confirmed direct hrtun; he spelled it out phonetically; and that's when we caught it. Put in the right fix and adjusted the heading about 20 degrees. The headings were fairly close at that distance; two fixes that phonetically sound the same; with a letter shift difference. Recommend changing hrtun or hurtn to something different. Both in same geographic area and are less than 100 miles apart. Continue qc checks of points and hard look at points on both flight plan and FMC. This one was hard to catch with same letters and slightly different order.

Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: Airline flight crew was advised of a track deviation in flight while navigation to HRTUN intersection and realized HURTN had been programmed during preflight. The waypoints are less than 100 NM apart.

Narrative: During preflight; non-standard flight plan; Captain retrieved and typed in fixes from PDC while I wasn't there. When I returned I looked at PDC and then briefed the routing as Captain QC'd [quality checked/controlled] the fixes in the box. Phonetically called out fix HRTUN (HURTIN). Captain had misspelled it as HURTN. Center cleared us direct HRTUN. I pulled up the fix to top of the page; we confirmed it; and selected it. A couple of minutes later; ATC queried our heading. We confirmed direct HRTUN; he spelled it out phonetically; and that's when we caught it. Put in the right fix and adjusted the heading about 20 degrees. The headings were fairly close at that distance; two fixes that phonetically sound the same; with a letter shift difference. Recommend changing HRTUN or HURTN to something different. Both in same geographic area and are less than 100 miles apart. Continue QC checks of points and hard look at points on both flight plan and FMC. This one was hard to catch with same letters and slightly different order.

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.

Attributes
ACN	1261465
Time
Date	201505
Place
Locale Reference	ZME.ARTCC
State Reference	TN
Environment
Light	Daylight
Aircraft 1
Make Model Name	Medium Large Transport Low Wing 2 Turbojet Eng
Operating Under FAR Part	Part 121
Flight Phase	Cruise
Flight Plan	IFR
Component
Aircraft Component	FMS/FMC
Person 1
Function	First Officer
Qualification	Flight Crew Air Transport Pilot (ATP)
Experience	Flight Crew Last 90 Days 176
Events
Anomaly	ATC Issue All Types Deviation - Procedural Clearance Deviation - Track / Heading All Types

Airline flight crew was advised of a track deviation in flight while navigation to hrtun intersection and realized hurtn had been programmed during preflight. The waypoints are less than 100 NM apart.