Narrative:

Our flight was assigned the la guardia 2 departure with the whitestone climb from runway 13. This calls for an initial right turn after takeoff to a heading of 180 degrees followed by a left turn at 2.5 DME from lga to a heading of 040 degrees. At 2.5 DME I glanced down to confirm the second part of these instructions and erroneously viewed the pictorial portion of the departure chart which predominately indicates a swooping right turn. I mistakenly saw the maspeth climb depiction and initiated a right turn instead of the correct left turn. The captain quickly advised that I should be executing a left turn and I did so. No conflict problems were reported to us and we continued the remainder of the departure without incident. In my opinion; contributing factors to this event would be: 1) the clearance did not match our anticipated route and departure procedure so the entire route from lga-den had to be loaded manually in the box. 2) congestion; both traffic and frequency; in and around lga augment an already high workload and add confusion to critical phases of flight. 3) this specific departure chart contains numerous verbal and visual instructions that can be easily forgotten between the takeoff briefing and actual takeoff. 4) the 'special' engine out procedure calls for several different actions dependent upon the timing of the engine failure and can clutter an already cluttered departure procedure.to prevent such errors in the future we should: 1) dedicate more time and attention to departures that are complicated or have congested charts to avoid confusing which transitions and runway clearances apply to our flight. 2) remind ourselves of our course and headings for the departure procedure prior to take off. Long taxi times (common in lga) leave too much time between the take off briefing and actual take off. 3) split this departure onto 2 different charts to reduce clutter and confusion.

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Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: An A319 First Officer turned the wrong direction while executing the LGA 2 SID; WHITESTONE CLIMB from LGA.

Narrative: Our flight was assigned the La Guardia 2 Departure with the Whitestone Climb from Runway 13. This calls for an initial RIGHT turn after takeoff to a heading of 180 degrees followed by a LEFT turn at 2.5 DME from LGA to a heading of 040 degrees. At 2.5 DME I glanced down to confirm the second part of these instructions and erroneously viewed the pictorial portion of the departure chart which predominately indicates a swooping right turn. I mistakenly saw the Maspeth Climb depiction and initiated a RIGHT turn instead of the correct LEFT turn. The Captain quickly advised that I should be executing a left turn and I did so. No conflict problems were reported to us and we continued the remainder of the departure without incident. In my opinion; contributing factors to this event would be: 1) The clearance did not match our anticipated route and departure procedure so the entire route from LGA-DEN had to be loaded manually in the box. 2) Congestion; both traffic and frequency; in and around LGA augment an already high workload and add confusion to critical phases of flight. 3) This specific departure chart contains numerous verbal and visual instructions that can be easily forgotten between the takeoff briefing and actual takeoff. 4) The 'Special' Engine Out Procedure calls for several different actions dependent upon the timing of the engine failure and can clutter an already cluttered departure procedure.To prevent such errors in the future we should: 1) Dedicate more time and attention to departures that are complicated or have congested charts to avoid confusing which transitions and runway clearances apply to our flight. 2) Remind ourselves of our course and headings for the departure procedure prior to take off. Long taxi times (common in LGA) leave too much time between the take off briefing and actual take off. 3) Split this Departure onto 2 different charts to reduce clutter and confusion.

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.