Whoa. What a sh** show.
It all works great..... until it doesn’t. I have no idea why the controller did not give the corrected headings to Eva in degrees instead of directions in such a stressful situation. Those guys fly by rote, they will execute instructions but it can’t be in nonstandard form.
I have had London Control give me headings referenced to compass directions, I.e. “American 135 heavy turn left heading North” but that’s not usual, and it makes perfect sense to us when it happens.
Longtime ago I was working for a cargo carrier in Detroit. We were out doing practice approaches when we heard Detroit Approach working a small Cessna who was obviously lost. They poor guy was trying to identify landmarks and was having trouble getting his transponder to work. The controller was trying to identify him by giving vectors. The guy kept screwing that up as well. Finally the controller said “turn towards the big E on your compass and look for the river”.
And I would fault the EVA crew for not recognizing the situation and speaking up sooner. According to the NTSB they got multiple alerts then the final terrain warning, yet they never said a word???