Amazing that reversed controls happen in this day and age. Surely there are different plugs and sockets for each function - physically incapable of being mated the wrong way round?
I remember a BAe146 ground engineer many years ago responding to my innocent question: “do you guys use checklists like us ?”. He said, “No, we use common sense”. I thought at the time this was a foolish situation.
I can imagine (hopefully incorrectly), in a busy maintenance hangar with deadlines and aircraft needing to be moved: “Controls right, controls left?” “Er yeah, all working” (but reversed and not noticed by a non pilot).
The other day there was a lorry on the motorway with fancy LED rear lights. However, when he applied the brakes, the right hand brake lights came on but on the left side only the amber indicator lights illuminated. So not a very thorough check of the lighting wiring and function had been made there !
One hopes that nowadays, detailed checklists are used by aircraft maintenance engineers after any extensive work to check basic things like control movements, and leaving absolutely no doubt: ‘Control column full right. Right aileron up. Right spoilers up. Left aileron down, Left spoilers flush.’ etc. Certainly, the ground engineers on the flight deck fixing our Airbuses always seem to have reams of detailed written checks to perform after fixing something.
But how come the pilots did not pick it up before take-off? Must be a nightmare trying to land with reversed controls. Anybody like me when I was about 12 who very foolishly tried crossing over their hands on their bicycle handlebars to see how difficult it would be, fell off very quickly because it is almost impossible to tell your brain to make opposite corrections. The learned reflex response is much quicker.