An air carrier crew failed to track J-86 near iah because the NAVAID name; humble; is located some d...

Narrative:

During the climbout from hou; we were assigned a heading to intercept J86. During the preflight planning; we looked up the airway assigned on clearance and both agreed on the appropriate navaid and radial. Just prior to intercepting the course; as we were about to turn; ATC advised us that we had just passed the airway. We immediately corrected to course. In looking at the high altitude chart; we had incorrectly read the navaid as trinity when it should have been off the humble VOR. The chart is incredibly difficult to read and trinity is right next to the VOR and humble and the frequency are about four inches removed from the jetway. The arrow to it was barely readable and misreading the chart caused a slight overshoot of the airway. Of note; it appears that a company aircraft did the exact same thing based on radio traffic. The chart could be better marked to prevent this from happening as two crews and four sets of eyes all saw the same thing.

Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: An air carrier crew failed to track J-86 near IAH because the NAVAID name; HUMBLE; is located some distance from the navaid symbol but the name TRINITY (MHF) is located near the IAH symbol making them believe that MHF was part of J-86.

Narrative: During the climbout from HOU; we were assigned a heading to intercept J86. During the preflight planning; we looked up the airway assigned on clearance and both agreed on the appropriate navaid and radial. Just prior to intercepting the course; as we were about to turn; ATC advised us that we had just passed the airway. We immediately corrected to course. In looking at the high altitude chart; we had incorrectly read the navaid as TRINITY when it should have been off the HUMBLE VOR. The chart is incredibly difficult to read and TRINITY is right next to the VOR and HUMBLE and the frequency are about four inches removed from the jetway. The arrow to it was barely readable and misreading the chart caused a slight overshoot of the airway. Of note; it appears that a Company aircraft did the exact same thing based on radio traffic. The chart could be better marked to prevent this from happening as two Crews and four sets of eyes all saw the same thing.

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.

Attributes
ACN	907408
Time
Date	201009
Local Time Of Day	1201-1800
Place
Locale Reference	ZHU.ARTCC
State Reference	TX
Environment
Flight Conditions	VMC
Light	Daylight
Aircraft 1
Make Model Name	Large Transport Low Wing 2 Turbojet Eng
Operating Under FAR Part	Part 121
Flight Phase	Climb
Route In Use	Airway J86
Flight Plan	IFR
Component
Aircraft Component	ILS/VOR
Person 1
Function	Captain
Experience	Flight Crew Last 90 Days 203
Events
Anomaly	Deviation - Procedural Published Material / Policy Deviation - Procedural Clearance Deviation - Track / Heading All Types

An air carrier crew failed to track J-86 near iah because the NAVAID name; humble; is located some distance from the navaid symbol but the name trinity (mhf) is located near the iah symbol making them believe that mhf was part of J-86.